There are some movies that seem to have a life far beyond their intended run, and it’s fitting that one of those movies should be The Mummy from 1999. Much like its titular character, the movie is out of its time, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

The story is what you’d expect from a film like this. In Ancient Egypt, a priest is entombed alive inside a sarcophagus for having an affair with the pharaoh’s mistress. Three thousand years later, his tomb is disturbed and he begins a rampage through 1920s Cairo.

This is a movie that could easily have been made decades earlier and wouldn’t look out of place. It deals in all the tropes of ’20s and ’30s action movies, but is self aware enough not to become a cartoon. It’s got simple enough characters and doesn’t trouble you with too much development or by sending them on meaningful arcs. There are some glaring gaps in logic and occasional faults scattered throughout, but that doesn’t take away from the enjoyment. It’s here to entertain, and it succeeds.

Brendan Fraser is the real force that carries the movie. He has the kind of easy charisma that makes him a delight to watch, and as soon as his appears onscreen, you begin to root for him. His character of Rick O’Connor isn’t just a copy of Indiana Jones, more a treasure hunter and adventurer than scholar. He’s backed up by a solid cast, including Rachel Weisz as Evelyn, a bookish aspiring archeologist, John Hannan as her eccentric brother Jonathan, Arnold Vosloo as the intimidating main villain Imhotep, and a standout in Kevin J. O’Connor as Beni, a double crossing thief and “friend” of Rick.

None of them have huge backstories to uncover and that’s fine. It calls back to those Doug McClure type of adventure movies, where a random team was assembled with just enough individuality to tell them all apart.

It’s surprisingly broad in scale, too, with a large battle near the beginning, and plenty of scene changes, moving from a fight on a boat, to the dark passages inside the pyramid, and then to the crowded streets of Cairo. There’s even a scene involving a biplane. It’s almost as though someone took all the most famous scenes from Indiana Jones and included them here!

In short, The Mummy is a film that will surprise you, but not in the way you’d expect. As a movie that plays on the 1930s action adventure trope, it fills all the boxes, but where it will really turn that around is in just how good it is. There’s always something to keep you invested, and it’s surprisingly effective in a lot of ways. When you look at films like The Matrix that released the same year, The Mummy seems out of it’s time, but it’s that very quality that means, one or two bits of CGI aside, it hasn’t aged a day in twenty five years.

A fun, entertaining, and surprisingly effective callback to classic action-adventure movies. A solid cast led by Brendan Fraser make every moment of this film a joy to watch. 8/10