Hey folks, Harry here.... so ya lost out on your Ebay bid to go to the World Premiere of THE MUMMY RETURNS... You've been licking you wounded macho inner hunter dude wounds, and pondering what might have been... Well, ponder no longer, Craig attended and gives us a breakdown on how the event went... Did it suck, rule or stagnate? Did the lovely Rachel wrap her beautiful arms around our spy and go home with him? Read about it all... below....
Heya Harry,
I don't have the kind of movie industry connections that y'all have, so I haven't had a reason to contribute anything before. However, last night I had the opportunity to attend the premier of the Mummy Returns at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles. It certainly was a fun night for me, and I thought you might like some feedback. I'll try to be brief (although I can be a wordy bastard) and to make it entertaining. Of course please edit as you see fit.
My long-time friend Lance is a USC film school graduate and now teaches Film and Television in the Bay Area, and as an alumni he gets the occasional invites to premiers that are fund raisers for the film school. Having never followed up on any of these invites (they're pretty expensive), he got a wild hair and decided to invite (and pay for!) myself, my wife, and another friend to attend The Mummy Returns premier. Needless to say we jumped at the opportunity!
We hit the road from San Jose CA at 7:00 AM Sunday morning - the day of the premier. By about 2:30 PM we reached a friend's house not too far from Universal Studios, unloaded the car, put on what we assumed were appropriate clothes for a premier (what does one wear to such an event?) and headed for Universal.
We arrived a couple hours before the event, as included with the premier was a pass to check out Universal's new mummy-themed attraction called "The Mummy Returns - Chamber of Doom", which turned out to be a modern version of the old "dark rides" that you would find at places like Coney Island in the early 1900's... and I mean that in an affectionate way. It's basically a walk-through "haunted house" (or in this case, Egyptian tomb) with lots of things that pop out and scare you, or blow air on you, etc. Genuinely fun in an unpretentious, almost nostalgic sort of way. What can I say: mummies, mummies, and more mummies. There were a couple parts that were obviously not finished - I can only assume they will be so by the time the attraction opens. At one point I touched the wall and noticed that the paint was fresh & still tacky, so this must have been a relatively early preview.
Ok, this a movie site, so we'll move on... before too long it was time to head to the amphitheater.
None of us were sure what to expect: on one hand you think of the cliche red carpet and movie stars, but on the other hand the ticket package said something about arriving early to watch the stars arrive on the jumbotron... so we were thinking that they might just herd us in and give the "public" a different premier experience. As it turned out this was mostly not the case.
It's a kick in the pants to get to walk through the folks who are curious about what's going on, show your tix, and walk past the guards and on down the red carpet. For a moment, I suppose I succumbed to shallowness and savored a little "heh heh - yep, we're going in there... yessirree Bob, with these here tickets". In any case, I quickly became grounded again while watching the Hollywood-types do their no-touchy cheek-kissy ritualistic greetings. It's a bit odd when such superficiality slaps you in the face, and you're thinking, "Wow, they really do that... and they really mean it, too."
So on up the big red carpet - past the lady quickly pouring a gallon of what smelled like "Pine Sol" into a fetid gutter filled with dumpster drippings - to where the movie star-types work the line. I don't get to see too many celebs, so it was a kick to see some up close - we spotted Rob Schneider (comedian dude), Michael Clarke Duncan, Judson Scott (cool messiah dude who recently took a bullet to the cranium on "The X-Files"), the main blonde ILM FXs dude who appears a lot on the extra making-of short on The Mummy dvd (sorry, rented that one so don't have a name), and from the night's main flick Patricia Velazquez and Arnold Vosloo.
Also of note were a couple of live camels and some slinky faux Egyptian bathing beauty babes decorating the opposite side of the meet-n-greet line - a spectacle gloriously fantastic and utterly artificial as only Hollywood or Las Vegas can contrive. And Harry, there were two total eye-candy nothing-to-do-with-the-movie hotties in what looked like Egyptian bikinis & heels posing for the press. I specifically tried to get a shot of them for you, but in my attempts at not looking like a dufus, the shot didn't come out. I didn't shoot too many outside in line, then when I got inside it turned out that cameras were not allowed there, so I don't have many digital photos on hand.
So in we go, find our seats (pretty good ones) and watch a digital projection of some more of the schmoozing going on outside. At some point Brendan Fraser shows up, along with The Rock... and the schmoozing continues outside for 40 minutes past "doors closing" time. Eventually the lights dim and the flick begins.
I believe that there have already been a couple reviews on AICN, so I'll keep mine as brief as my gabbiness will allow.
I only saw "The Mummy" last week for the first time on dvd (having a toddler and no convenient baby sitting somewhat removes you from the movie-viewing public). I basically enjoyed the film in much the same way that I enjoyed the "Chamber of Doom" attraction: to me it's just a fun action flick with good action and good characters. I particularly liked the fact that the weasely toady of Imhotep has some likable characteristics along with his despisable ones. In a nutshell, I thought the interesting characters and good action turned the basically one dimensional story line into a very enjoyable flick (using Harry terminology, I believe).
So how does "The Mummy Returns" compare? I'm going to try to for the most part avoid spoilers here.
I don't think a whole lot has been added to the characters... there are certainly new revelations made regarding the nature of the O'Connell's (yes, they're now married with a kid) relationship to the whole Imhotep/mummy/ancient Egyptian cosmic story line, but for the most part all of the returning characters don't grow or evolve much. Also, the few new characters aren't quite as interesting as in the previous movie.
However, what the characters do a *lot* of is reacting - this movie is for the most part non-stop action and also for the most part really good action. There are some really great fight scenes, one of which (the one involving a London double-decker bus) reaches up to the level of maybe "The Road Warrior" or the fight at Marion's bar in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" - great fun and pretty unpredictable to my tiny brain.
Now, this movie is in no way on the level of either of the previously mentioned classics. Really, a pretty good description (if you can call it that) is to take the original movie, turn down the character development a few notches, and crank up the action level and size of the production way the hell up. I think the product is a worthy sequel - people who liked the original and, *importantly*, those who don't get hung up on plot quibbles such as "I didn't think the jet engine was really used at all (if even invented yet) in 1933", or "If those guys are trying to be clandestine, then why are they wearing their bad guy bright red turbans and complete desert outfits in foggy old London?" - if you can just let go of such plot or physics problems, then this is a fun movie you'll probably really enjoy. I just winced occasionally and had a great time. The plot is an adequate skeleton to hang the meat of the action on (har har).
A couple final notes on the movie: I think they did a pretty good job of really making a bloodless movie. Sure, a few body parts/complete bodies are stripped of flesh or emaciated before our eyes, but by golly there's not a lot of bloodshed! Also, I personally thought the visual effects varied wildly from the obvious image manipulation to very high quality. A little distracting to me, but then again the amphitheater's movie screen was friggin' enormous, so maybe that made the effects more apparent. Who knows?
I do know that I have never seen a movie at concert volume before. Jeez, when are sound folks going to learn that there comes a point where louder is not better. Afterwards I overheard a guy nearby me saying to someone that he had read the script, and that he still couldn't tell what people were saying half the time.
After the film, we headed out to the party in the parking lot, which was a kick. I'm not much of a party person, but there were all kinds of little events set up to entertain. Complimentary photos were taken of folks in front of a double-decker London bus, some of the cars from the film, and between a couple of the mummy warriors in front of the "spear engraving" from the Scorpion King's temple. There was another photo we didn't check out due to the length of the line. We also met Judson Scott (very friendly and polite) and Arnold Vosloo, who was very patiently and attentively saying hello to everyone who asked to meet him and posing for photos with them - also very nice.
One final note: I thought it odd at one point when I realized at a moment of hugging my wife, that I had not seen anyone else present that night openly showing affection to a loved one. The Hollywood crowd - just kinda odd, I guess.
Thanks for reading this far - and my condolences.
Craig
