Mummies Review

Mummies is a Spanish animated film that aimed to capitalise on the Easter holidays in the UK.

Under the Earth is a secret city for Ancient Egyptian Mummies. In this city is Thut (Joe Thomas), a retired chariot racer who enjoys the single life. Nefer (Eleanor Tomlinson) is the princess, and heir to the kingdom, and longs for independence. By chance of fate, the pair are arranged to marry, and Thut is given the ceremonial ring. When the ring gets looted by a British archaeologist, Thut and Nefer are forced to go to London to retrieve it.

The trailer for Mummies has been shown regularly before every family film in my local cinemas for months. So, the film was on my radar. Mummies seem to have more going for it than some other European Animated films. Warner Brothers distributed the film in the UK, and the voice cast featured many recognisable British names, like Thomas, Tomlinson, Sean Bean, Hugh Bonneville, and Celia Imrie.

Mummies did have some virtues. It was well-animated and looked better than the previous Euro-animation I saw, Epic Tails. There were some well-crafted sequences like an early chariot race and a chase in London. I did chuckle a couple of times, once at a reference to Stargate, the other was a joke about Thut losing his senses. The kids in the audience I was with enjoyed the sequence when Thut had to play a hero and infiltrate a museum. There was also a reference to a Spanish event that made international headlines that might give some adults a smile.

However, Mummies had a lot of issues that it wasn’t able to overcome. The biggest was Thut and Nefer’s character journeys. Their first meeting was one nearly crashing into the other and they despised each other immediately. The pair want to prevent their marriage but as it progressed they slowly developed feelings for each other but wouldn’t confess it. This was emphasised with a Nickelback song. It was tiringly predictable. There wasn’t a new spin or even a well-told story.

Nefer was portrayed like a Disney Princess. She had obligations to marry and rule but she wanted to control her own destiny. She even gets a Disney princess song when she first enters the palace where she sings about the boredom of living life as a princess. Mummies shows how difficult this type of story can be because they did it so poorly. There was a big story issue with Mummies since Nefer was heir to the throne, but mummies were immortal and the underworld city was shown to be a peaceful, prosperous place, so it looked unlikely that she would need to rule.

The film had such little confidence in its story that it had to have a subplot where Nefer becomes a pop star. It was more of a story diversion since any urgency to find the ring disappears as Nefer gets to dress and make a music video. Karina Pasian was hired to do the singing voice for Nefer which led to the question, couldn’t the production hire a voice actress who was also a singer?

Mummies was a tired animated offering that was the cinematic equivalent of going through the motions. It was a film that only entertains younger children and they will forget about it when they grow older.