Plot
Two bumbling and broke treasure hunters sitting in a coffee shop in Egypt
overhear a conversation with a famous archaeologist and they follow him back
to his hotel in the hope of securing a job transporting his newest
acquisition, the mummy of Klaris, back to the US. However a secret cult
tracks the professor down and murders him for taking a medallion from the
tomb which supposedly holds the key to finding the whereabouts of a great
fortune. The two men arrive on the scene too late and are framed for the
murder. But they find themselves in possession of the medallion and soon the
cult are after them as well as the police.
Review
Their last film with Universal, Abbott and Costello round up their
'Meet' series by coming face-to-face with the mummy, the only one of the
Universal big hitters that they hadn't come up against. The duo were on the
slide, their careers were winding down (this was their penultimate film) and
you can tell right from the start that their hearts just weren't in it
anymore and the chemistry that they once had seemed to have evaporated. If
you've never seen one of these films before, then think of it as a really
early precursor to something like Shaun of the Dead where a popular
comedy duo is thrust into the world of horror to deal with something
monstrous. There's no real modern day version of their antics against the
likes of Frankenstein, Dracula and co. but maybe that's a good thing!
Considering how poor some of their later work was, Abbott and Costello Meet
the Mummy is surprisingly entertaining for fans of the duo and does just
enough to get by. Its full of the hallmarks of the
Abbott and Costello Meet... series including Costello being the only
one who sees the monsters until the end of the film and no one believes him, monsters which look intimidating but end up
being wet blankets and pure comic foil, bad guys who robotically speak awfully contrived
dialogue to make themselves sound tougher, dead bodies which disappear right before Abbott comes on the
scene and who then has a go at Costello for making things up, hidden passages which lead to all manner of crazy situations and much
more.
There's no plot to speak of, just a continual number of set pieces,
characters shifting allegiances and then stalking each other around the
desert and then the tomb of Klaris. It's pretty flimsy plotting and the film
just goes wherever the heck it likes most of the time, drifting from routine
to routine without any particular structure. It stretches everything out to
pad the running time as much as it can and there's little material for a
short let alone a full feature film. The routines that the duo go through are all well-worn by
this point so if you've seen any of their previous work, you'll know what to
expect. They do their classic "who's on
first?" exchange (for those who don't know, check it out at Wikipedia as
it's too complex to explain in a review) with a fantastic argument between Abbott and Costello about a shovel and a pick.
The rest of the jokes fall a little flat for the most. It may have been
funny back when they first hit it big but by this point, most of it was just
too daft or repetitive to laugh at. They're going through the motions big
time and it shows.
Despite Abbott and Costello hamming it up at every
opportunity, the rest of the cast play it completely straight which doesn't
work in their favour, especially the cardboard cutout bad guys. They don't
get anything to do other than run around some of the cheapest-looking sets
ever made. The 'desert' set looks like a cut-rate school production and the
Egyptian tomb must have been for the most hard-up prince because it's
sparsely decorated. Films are supposed to do a job in making you believe
that the actors are in these exotic locations but the only thing you'll be
believing is that there's a chance someone would trip and fall into the
background, causing the whole set to crash into the ground. Even the mummy looks pathetic - a skinny,
shabby mess which looks like a guy who got into a fight with a toilet roll
dispenser and lost. This is the sort of cinematic mummy that gave the
monster a bad reputation. The mummy does little in the film other than
bumble around the tomb at the end of the film and seems to have been
forgotten about as the duo try to evade the various groups out to get the
medallion for themselves. It's an afterthought but in a film with little
energy, creativity or spark, there's no wonder that the mummy would prefer
to lay in it's sarcophagus for the duration.
Verdict
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy is far from their best work but
contains a few decent moments. Fans may get a few chuckles out of seeing the
same routines wheeled out for one last time and as daft as it is, the finale
involving three mummies wandering around the tombs is silly fun. If you're
new to the duo then you're best off checking out their first, and best,
pairing with Universal's monsters in Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein (and Dracula and the Wolf Man too!).
