Critics decry The Mummy as Tom Cruise's 'worst film' yet

An inauspicious start lies ahead for Universal’s new ‘Monster movie’ franchise – with dreadful box office predictions and equally dreadful reviews coming in for ‘The Mummy’.

So far, the movie has a worrisome 25% approval rating on reviews aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, and box office tracking suggesting that it’s going to get hammered by ‘Wonder Woman’ this weekend.

David Ehrlich of Indiewire has proclaimed it “the Tom Cruise movie ever” saying “it stands out like a flat note on a grand piano. It’s not that Cruise hasn’t had misfires before… but ‘The Mummy’ is the first of his films that doesn’t feel like a Tom Cruise movie.”

Rolling Stone is also among the outlets giving the movie a kicking, veteran critic Peter Travers calling it an ‘epic fail’.

“How meh is The Mummy?” he writes.

“Let me count the ways. For all the digital desperation from overworked computers, this Tom Cruise reboot lands onscreen with a resounding thud.”

Sadly, he’s not alone.

A.A. Dowd on AV Club adds: “Though occasionally enlivened by Cruise’s willingness to endure a nonstop gauntlet of humiliation, this is a modern blockbuster in many of the worst ways; it’s noisy but rarely exciting, heavy on whizzing and whirling special effects but light on wonder.”

Geoffrey McNab for the Telegraph concurs: “Whenever the action stops, though, the film becomes derivative and empty headed, Strip away the bandages and there really isn’t very much here at all.”

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian writes: “The Cruisemeister himself is left high and dry by plot lurches which leave him doing his boggle-eyed WTF expression. In one scene he is nude so we can see what undeniably great shape he’s in. The flabby, shapeless film itself doesn’t have his muscle-tone.

“It’s a ragbag of action scenes which needed to be bandaged more tightly.”

And in a punishing notice, Variety’s Owen Gleiberman already fears for the franchise’s future.

“’The Mummy’ is a literal-minded, bumptious monster mash of a movie. It keeps throwing things at you, and the more you learn about the ersatz intricacy of its ‘universe,’ the less compelling it becomes,” he writes.

Oh dear.

The critical landscape isn’t irredeemably bad, however, with a few outlets giving the movie some veiled praise.

Total Film calls it ‘uneven, but plenty of fun’, while Entertainment Weekly adds: “I’m not sure that this aimless, lukewarm, but occasionally rollicking take on The Mummy is how the studio dreamed that its Dark Universe would kick off. But it’s just good enough to keep you curious about what comes next.”

It doesn’t bode massively well, considering that Universal is planning to roll out a film in its ‘dark universe’ every year, with the likes of Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man and Javier Bardem as Frankenstein’s monster both embroiled.

To add to its woes, The Hollywood Reporter finds that figures for its opening weekend could be as low as $35 million, which considering its $125 million price tag, could be disastrous.

It’s out in the UK from tomorrow.

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