‘A dog’s dinner can be a delicious meal for your pet, or something entirely different.
Doris: I’m going to the cinema with a couple of friends from football tomorrow night. Do you want to come with us?
Jake: What are you going to see?
Doris: My friends are great Tom Cruise fans. We’re going to see ‘The Mummy’.
Jake: Oh … definitely not! I went to see it last week, and it’s a dog’s dinner from beginning to end.
Doris: Really? But Tom Cruise doesn't make bad films.
Jake: Oh, yes he does! ‘The Mummy’ is an absolute mess.
Doris: What’s wrong with it?
Jake: It can't make up its mind what sort of film it wants to be. One minute it’s a horror film, the next a romance, the next an adventure movie and the next a typical Tom Cruise action pic. It's all so confusing and boring.
Doris: I thought it was a horror film. I read somewhere that the original ‘The Mummy’ made in black and white in the 1930s is one of the scariest movies ever.
Jake: Sorry! You are in for a massive disappointment if you are expecting to be scared. This ‘Mummy’ wouldn't scare a five year old kid.
Doris: Oh wow!
Jake: For the first ten minutes, I thought I was watching a war movie. Tom Cruise running around in a war zone in Syria casually killing other men and showing off how brave he is. I thought I was watching the wrong film.
Doris: I hate war films.
Jake: Exactly. And the film’s attitude to the women characters is just a mess. The film has two female characters, and neither are convincing. One is the evil title character, and I just didn’t believe in the role. The other woman is supposed to be a clever archaeologist, but she’s there just to be rescue by Mr Cruise.
Doris: I thought that approach to women in movies had disappeared.
Jake: Not Cruise’s character’s presented all the way through as superior to the secondary female lead character.
Doris: You are really putting me off.
Jake: You know I’m a great movie buff, and ‘The Mummy’ borrows ideas from other better movies. There isn't one original idea in the whole film.
Doris: Did you stay until the end?
Jake: Oh, I never walk out of a movie. I always give it a chance. But this one nearly made me break that rule. I got tired of all the chasing, the fighting, the messy story, the lack of scares, the attitude to women - the whole lot. It was one big dog’s dinner.
Oh ….. there is one good thing about it - it’s less than two hours long, which is quite short these days. If it had been any longer I might have broken my rule and walked out.
But that’s just my opinion. Your friends might think it’s okay, but I doubt it. Even the biggest Tom Cruise fans will be disappointed with this.