Lanie Week
The Mummy Returns
Signs
*spoilers? ahead maybe. Truly idk if my bitching counts*
This week we celebrated Lanie’s 30th birthday! And out of respect to all of those who observe this holiday, we watched two films picked by the gal of the moment—a favorite of my sister’s: The Mummy Returns, and a total wildcard off of her watchlist, M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate one’s next rotation around the sun than watching something excellent and something disappointing. Listen, you just can’t go wrong with 2001 Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. Their chemistry is real, and both of them are so undeniably charming that the multitude of instances where their son is put in danger because they’re so distracted by one another felt believable. While the first film will always be my favorite, The Mummy Returns was just as much fun. This mummy movie has everything: mummies, freaky bugs, quicksand, weird lil baby monkey skeleton demons, and some of the best special effects the early 2000s had to offer. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Brendan Fraser, in the prime of his career, say “I hate mummies”. The fact that this was one of The Rock’s breakthrough roles, when he’s only physically in the movie for about 2 minutes, then depicted in wacky ass CGI for another 2 minutes, is really funny to me. I wish this evening had been all mummies and hunks, but unfortunately, we need to talk about Signs. Hmm. This kinda sucked. M. Night really said “Come for the aliens, stay for the allegories about god” and Mel Gibson said “BET”. This had all of the potential to be great, like all of M. Night Shyamalan’s films. But just like a good chunk of his other films (including, but not limited to The Last Airbender) Signs ultimately fell short. This movies gets some points for its ability to build suspense, and the fact that the aliens are actually scary. Apart from this, and maybe baby Abigail Breslin, there weren’t many redeeming qualities to this movie. While sci-fi is often rich in metaphors, the allusions here didn’t lead to any epiphanies or even any excitement. It felt unnecessarily depressing at times and existential in a way that was unsatisfying. As if Mel Gibson’s aura of intolerance and ignorance weren’t off-putting enough, the ending of this movie was SO stupid. There were so many moments where you could tell the intention was to make the audience go “whoa” but instead I just went “no”, many many times. Shout out to Joaquin Phoenix for that rant about the socially awkward, isolated incels that he’d be typecast as later on in his career, though. Maybe I’m being overly critical but when it comes to alien movies, I’m a simple woman. I want scary aliens, and I want the suspense to lead to something a little more significant than: your dead wife died so that y’all wouldn’t have to? I could elaborate on the subject of why this movie sucks, but I won’t spoil anything else / it’s really too stupid to talk about. Instead, I implore you to read this scathing review of Lady in the Water. (Also, as a person with asthma, the representation here was just incorrect and weird lol I didn’t love the suggestion that one could stop an asthma attack just by believing in oneself, just saying lmao) In conclusion, happy Lanie’s birthday for all who celebrate, Mel Gibson is a racist and an anti-Semite, and Brendan Fraser is eternally, exquisitely perfect.
