Being a stoner is like Memento. You’re always trying to remember what you just fucking did.
In my case, a handful of Bubba Kush nugs submerged my experience of watching Tom Cruise in the reboot of The Mummy. This flavorful indica is simply one of the best strains I’ve smoked. I also completely forgot I saw The Mummy until I woke two days later in a damp sweat, my weed-steeped room smelling like Willie Nelson’s hair.
Without tattoos to guide my remembrance of this clearly forgettable Mummy retread, I sifted through my chicken-scratch notes. “When no one is talking,” I apparently wrote, “the movie is quite good.”
The film features a spry Cruise stumbling upon the tomb of evil princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who looks like Katie Holmes wrapped in dirty plastic. Awakening with destruction on the brain, Ahmanet quickly chooses Scientology’s Favorite Son as her prospective husband for the apocalypse.
Girded by the spiraling Bubba Kush, my recollection of The Mummy is one long blur of self-important stares and CGI fuckery. Cruise spends much of the movie playing Final Girl, doing anything to avoid being turned into a pop-and-lock zombie. “Give in to me,” Ahmanet whispers to a resistant Cruise, who visibly winces at the thought of kissing her.
The Mummy only occasionally steps into the goofy grace of the perfectly watchable Brendan Fraser trilogy. The sumptuous desert setting affords the VFX artists to dream up lavish imagery with the emotional impact of a velvet painting—particularly in a scene where Death hands a naked woman a burning knife made of rubies.
Russell Crowe also damn near runs away with the movie as a ringleading Dr. Jekyl, whose monstrous Mr. Hyde is essentially (as my Stoner Friend observed) an impersonation of Ray Winstone. As the Nick Fury of Universal’s ill-fated Dark Universe franchise, Crowe’s fascinating take on this villain/hero could certainly fill its own movie.
If you’ve read this far, here’s the part where I recommend seeing The Mummy. It’s a terrible piece of crap. And only deserves to be seen high or drunk. But sometimes bad movies make you feel empowered, like a peasant mocking an oblivious passing giant.
“Imagine the same exact movie but with Ahmanet played by Arnold Vosloo,” my Stoner Friend intoned as we hit the putrid Times Square crowds, the powerful high of the Kush still rolling us into deep laughter. “It would be called The Gummy.”
This is why you keep notes.
