Despite the fact that I saw these two movies a few days apart, less than a month ago, I'll be damned if I can remember what happened in which. I'm also embarrassed to find myself giving them such good scores, but I can't help it. Neither movie was any good, both were painfully cheesy in many ways, but they had decent special effects, tolerable stories, and kept moving quickly. If they weren't so similar in almost every way I'd be able to remember which one did what, and probably give more differentiated scores. As it is, I remember both had unkillable mummies, both had ridiculous flying machines (though the 2nd one had a blimp that featured in as many violations of the laws of physics as any machine in the history of cinema), and both featured Brendan Fraser in roles that were 1 part Indiana Jones, 1 part Lara Croft, and 1 part typical Brendan Fraser dopey guy.

I didn't love anything in either movie, both would have been vastly improved by an R rating (rather than the teen-friendly box office-demanded PG-13 that kept them from ever actually being scary, sexy, gory, or intelligent), and they were utterly disposable and forgettable (as this review proves). All that aside though, they weren't that bad. They never connected on the same level of emotion or humor or humanity that the first Indiana Jones movie did (and the 2 sequels tried and failed to do), but they were slightly better than either Tomb Raider movie, and the action, while never gripping or intense, was at least entertaining.

They also had decent villains, an acceptable hero, and wacky/amusing sidekicks who weren't as loathsome as action movies have conditioned us to expect them to be. I was sure the drunken idiot brother of the hot chick would either die quickly or be the death of the first movie, and was shocked when he stayed alive and actually became somewhat funny. I was even more shocked when he turned up in the second movie and was one actually funny and non-loathsome.  Scorned as Stephen Sommers is by most movie-goers, we might have to give him credit for being able to write a script with a funny sidekick. He pulled it off in both Mummy pictures, and even the very mediocre Van Helsing had a funny sidekick. Having seen the Mummy pictures since I saw Van Helsing, it's obvious that Van Helsing's priest sidekick is essentially the same character as the brother in law in The Mummy 1 and 2. Bumbling, always stumbling into trouble, there to express dismay and terror at things the main character is too dumb/brave to react to, but with some nerve when it counts and solid enough to be counted on when things turn serious, if he can only keep from tripping over his own feet.

On the same topic, scorned as Brendan Fraser is by most everyone, he did an acceptable job in the Mummy pictures. I thought the way his character was written was pretty silly (must he fire 20 shots every time when 2 would do, bullets are scarce, and reloading takes forever in those old guns?), and it would be nice if he had some actual feelings and seemed like a real person once in a while, but for the emotionally-empty, thrill-a-minute rollercoaster rides of the Mummy movies, he wasn't that bad.