This is one of those rare movies where you find yourself criticizing every detail albeit so totally consumed with snarkery you are unable to turn away from the screen. More! you exclaim. More! I watched it from frame to frame and still not sure exactly what it was about. Something about some mummy who used to be a princess who whacked her father and brother for the throne. One of the cut scenes illustrating the father; henceforth to be known as "Pharaoh smalls" stands with his son, henceforth we shall call him "the prince of plot devices" together they survey the great Egyptian horizon as if to say we rule all of this. First off, they can have it. Miles upon miles of sandy dunes to rule over. So princess makes a deal with some thing that is regarded as the most evilest of evils. Kind of funny right there in that she just kind of "poof" suddenly dialed up this demonic evil and knew just what to do to solidify herself as the queen of evil. Yep, you guessed it. She was required sacrifice a man by the edge of an all powerful pocket knife with a gem in the hilt- however, at the moment she was supposed to sink the pocket knife into the mans chest she is stopped by what we later learn to be some ancient shadow cult that has existed from time immemorial with the sole purpose of stopping evil. So yeah, they .. wait for it... wait for it.. They lolz mummify her alive. Let that sink in for a second. Pretty sure Russel Crowe decided to wing it during his extended narration because the act of mummifying it to remove the blood and organs from a body and fill it with some innocuous substance thus preserving the corpse from rot. So, theres no such thing as mummifying someone alive they are mutually exclusive. So, for the purpose of this review lets ignore Russel's claim to have mummified her alive and say "they wrapped her with some already stanky bandages" and tossed her into some ornate, in a spartan sort of way, sarcophagus. So lets stop right here for a second shall we? They have gone to the trouble to stop her evil plans but instead of burning her to ash at the stake or some similar destructive method they haul her and a bunch of Egyptian statues to Mesopotamia and burry her in a pool of shimmery mercury a hundred feet or so into the ground. Remember that pocket knife? Well the jewel in the hilt is something of an artifact something akin to the ark of the covenant in an all powerful smite you death sort of way and like the 3rd cousin of Robert the Bruce ended up with that thing while campaigning in the crusades. Go figure. So I made that part of, about the 3rd cousin of the Bruce but not the part about the gem making it back to England with the crusaders. Ultimately the gem was buried in a Templar crypt in downtown London. You know, for safe keeping right? So to put this in perspective. If the pocketknife and the gem are ever reunited the mummy will have great power over life or death and the secret shadow cult cant be having any of that. So, yeah, instead of destroying the items they just kind of chill and wait to see how things play out. So, it turns out Russel Crowe is Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde and they have grand designs to kill Tom Cruise because Tom is, wait for it.. because Tom is... haha lolz Tom is of course the "chosen one" quite possibly the biggest movie cliche ever. There have been so many Chosen Ones throughout cinematic history its hard to find an actor who hasn't already played "the chose one." So yeah, Tom was chosen by the Mummy. Anyway, the mummy is partially filled with mercury before she eventually talks some cockroach into skittering across the floor and into the ear of some guy sitting behind a Pack Man arcade game. Ok, it wasn't Pac Man but it might as well have been. The movie to this point was so campy my brain inserted the Pac Man dot chomping sound effects at about this point- where Pac Man just gets to a "powerup" then immediately turns from hunted to hunter and dispatches a couple of ghosts. From here, we have zombies that break dance while the learn to walk, comic relief in the form of Tom's buddy who I think is one of those Pac Man ghosts as he periodically has to force the plot along by showing up and telling Tom where to look next and.. Oh wait. Lets gosub a little here. Did I mention Tom and his buddy- before Toms kills him of course, happen upon the Mummy's tomb by calling in a Hellfire missile strike on a hapless village filled with insurgents of some sort. Not sure what they are insurging but they seem angry as they fire hundreds if not thousands of rounds at close range yet still manage to miss hitting Tom or his sidekick while they flee the scene. We are never quite sure of why they were being shot at if other than just being garden variety toilet seat covers but i suspect it might have had something to do with the village elders' daughter I'm sure. So back to the action where Tom saves the life of the shadow cult spy in his midst by strapping a parachute on her and letting it rip. Meanwhile, Tom goes down with the aircraft but wakes up in the morgue in a scene right out of "this is definitely the case of some some Hollywood veteran with way too much creative control over Universal flicks. As I was saying Tom wakes up naked in the morgue and in bursts the spy, er, love interest, whatever she is. The scene is cringeworthy. Old Tom stands there naked and is flexing every muscle in his body to pose for the camera. Literally pulling out the Mr America pose to the point of rigidity when his body should be fluid based on the scene movement and requirements. Not only does he pose but the scene keeps the camera on him for so long during the pose you can tell, Tom himself must have had way too much control either overtly or sinisterly behind the scenes because the camera action during the scene was like no other scene in the movie. It paused far to long. So, yeah mix in the occasional zombie scene filled with special effects for the sole purpose of having special effects and don't forget the sand storm in downtown London that takes the shape of the mummy's face- it's like, uh.. wheres all that sand coming from? Did it suddenly fly in from that scene in Egypt where king smalls is admiring his extensive kingdom of desert nothingness? But wait there's more. This was supposed to be the start of some Dark Universe anti x men answer to the Marvel Universe or something. Lols not so much. Not a single scene in this mashup was unique or otherwise original in any way. A complete waste of time in a let's watch this thing just to see how bad it gets sort of way.