The Mummy-Volume 1: Quest for the Lost Scrolls (Animated) (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Animation	Main Menu Audio & Animation Game-Trivia Challenge Notes-Egyptology Biographies-Character Theatrical Trailer
Rating	?
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	61:30
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Eddy Houchins
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	None Given
Case	?
RPI	$29.95	Music	Cory Lerios John D'Andrea George Gabriel

    "Now comes the feature-length adventure" says the trailer — don't you believe it!

    This disc is a distillation of an animated series called The Mummy. It contains what I'm guessing are the first and last episodes, and another that is probably the second last one (placed in between the other two). As a bonus you can get access to a fourth episode if you solve the trivia challenge (it is not hard).

    I really enjoyed The Mummy, and I thought The Mummy Returns was even slightly better. But the spin-offs? The live-action spin-off, The Scorpion King, was not good. Now this arrives... and it is worse!

    The first episode of the series starts with the TV series opening credits. That's not too clever an idea, because they are intended to be used for the entire series, so they set the scene for the episodes by recapping the first episode (inaccurately). Not clever when you're about to watch the first episode...

    They clearly didn't watch the Mummy movies closely enough: they call the thing that gets attached to Alex's arm The Manacle of Osiris — in the movie it was The Bracelet of Anubis.

    After the first episode, where they set up the search for the lost Scrolls of Thebes (needed to get control of the Manacle of Osiris), we get a hurried summary of the rest of the intervening episodes. Then we're on to what I'm guessing are the last two episodes, where they actually find the scrolls. This is not a movie. There are a few references in the last two episodes to things we didn't get to see.

    There are several examples of sloppiness on this disc: Evelyn gets called Evie (which is correct) but the character profiles call her Evy; Rick gets referred to as Nick in one episode; Colin (a bad guy) supposedly reads from the Book of the Dead to awaken Imhotep, but he's reading English (the book is in Ancient Egyptian); Simon claims to have read The Mummy by Bram Stoker (there's no such book — Bram Stoker wrote Dracula). Also it's hard to explain how poorly they understand the physics of a blimp (and what it looks like inside, or what happens when you puncture it). But then, they don't have much idea of what a camel looks like, either.

    The plotting is poor, the animation is not good, and the "jokes" are dreadful.

Video

    The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. The only 16x9 enhanced thing on the disc is the first Universal logo we see when the disc loads.

    The image is mostly fairly clear, but there are quite a few examples of blurry / out-of-focus shots. Shadow detail is not a sensible consideration on this kind of animation (they don't even try to do decent shadow representation). There's no significant film grain. There's no low-level noise.

    Colour is pretty basic — most things are a single colour, with just a second colour for shading, showing complete lack of subtlety in colouring. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are virtually no film artefacts, but there's some telecine wobble: see 33:50 for example.

    There is a lot of aliasing — any moving object (and some stationary ones) exhibits aliasing and dot-crawl on the black lines that border the object. There's no moire, because there are no fine patterns that would exhibit it. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in English. They are easy to read, fairly accurate (albeit a bit abbreviated), and well-timed to the dialogue.

    The disc is single-sided and single-layered. That means no layer change — there's no need, given that there's only 80 minutes of video on the disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is a single soundtrack on this DVD in English. It is Dolby Digital 2.0, but sounds mostly mono.

    The dialogue is clear and understandable. Audio sync is difficult to judge on animation, but there are no egregious flaws.

    The score is more than a little clichιd, but does the job. It's credited to Cory Lerios, John D'Andrea, and George Gabriel.

    The surrounds and subwoofer get no signal from this soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is animated with music.

Game — Trivia Challenge

    If you choose the right answer to each of four questions you get to watch a fourth episode called The Orb of Aten (20:16). There's an interesting mistake for nine frames at 5:31, where Alex's eyes appear on the side of his head. This plot is even more corny than the main ones.

Notes — Egyptology

    20 pages of simplistic notes about various subjects.

Character Bios

    A single page on each of Alex O'Connell, Evy (misspelt) O'Connell, Rick O'Connell, Imhotep, and Ardeth Bay.

Trailer (1:03)

    A fairly over-blown trailer.

    The Region 1 disc has more extras, but they sound like nothing more than trailers for games. Other than that, the two discs sound essentially the same.

    A rather poor spin-off from two movies that deserve better.

    The video quality is not good.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are not too much fun, although the extra episode is a good reward for an easy trivia challenge..

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall