The setting: Hannah's living room floor. There is a couch but we're using the floor because there's no table and we're eating mango curry and also peanut butter cups.
MUMMIES! DISCO! DENNIS RODMAN! What do these all have in common? Under Wraps. If you’ve never seen this classic Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM, for those of you boobs I mean noobs), it’s about three tweens who accidentally encounter a mummy and embark on a mission to get him back in his coffin before midnight on Halloween, or he ceases to exist...FOREVER. This is the mummy we’re talking about. (He should cease to exist. He’s dead).
Some of you may not have seen this movie before, but Lindsay sure has. Boy has she ever. It was her halloween costume last year! Look!
The protagonists are three ripe tweens. First, we have the leader o’ the pack, a dark haired, blue-eyed rapscallion with a heart of gold. His name is either Matthew or Michael. Then we have his best friend (maybe), the classic dweeb with glasses and a faint heart. His name is either Phillip or Henry. Finally, there is the girl one. She exists.
Hannah: We should guess their names. I think the other one, the regular non-dweeby one is...
Lindsay: I think it’s Michael.
H: I was gonna say Matthew.
L: oooo Michael or Matthew for sure!
H: Matthew is Mike’s brother’s name.
L: Woah, weird!
H: Even though those are extremely common names. Uhhh! And the nerdy one, I think is gonna be... my like gut is telling me Herbert but I know there’s no children named Herbert in the 90’s.
L: I wish it was Herbert.
H: It’s probably like Derek. No, Derek might be the other one actually.
L: PHILIP!
H: Philip could be or like Henry.
L: Is that your final answer?
H: Yeah I’m going with Henry. Matthew for one Henry for the other.
As it turns out, their names are Marshall and Gilbert. I think you know who’s who. We first meet them as they exit a horror movie. While walking home, the boys pass the house of Mr. Kubat, Gilbert’s boss and real weirdo. In Gilbert’s two years as a newspaper delivery boy, Kubat has never paid him. This infuriates Marshall. He demands his friend gets fair wages. Lindsay calls him “a little union leader.”
The next day at school we meet Amy, the girl one.
Amy informs them that Kubat died and a neighbor found him lying in a pool of pancake batter. She knows this because her mom is selling the house. Obviously, they have to go explore it because as explained, he was a real weirdo.
They explore at night, in the dark, obviously. In order to get a peek at the goods in the basement (Kubat was a museum curator or something so he owned a lot of goods) they lower Gilbert through a storm window by holding his ankles (impossible). He spots the mummy, shrieks, runs away, and then realizes he’s lost his glasses. He runs for like a long time though. A good while. He realizes he’s blind and yells “OH MY GLASSES” like only a Gilbert could. (This is gilbert's future). The pals go back to get the glasses and surprise! The mummy has arisen! He lives! And Dies! In toilet paper! Also, he’s holding Gilbert’s glasses. Marshall reacts like any 12 year old would and says he wants to keep the mummy for experiments. But then he changes his mind almost immediately and soon grows to see the mummy as a father figure?
At this point Lindsay decides she needs to get up to get more mango curry. Hannah offers what's left in her bowl and Lindsay is elated that she doesn't have to stand up but still gets to eat more. On screen, something lurks in the dark and Hannah emits a sound.
Lindsay: Are you scared? Or did you just burp?
Hannah: I burped. What if you burped when you were scared? Instead of screaming when a monster jumped out at you it was like like…
L: [imitates burp]
H: Wait jump out at me
L: AHH!!
H: [poorly imitates burp] Oh I don't know how to fake a burp
[both fail to imitate burp sound]
Gilbert is starting to look very familiar but neither of us can place him. Hannah learns he was in Gilmore Girls for a hot second as Brad, a theater dweeb that Paris bullied. Lindsay didn't watch GG and still can't place him. We learn via Wikipedia that he was once a Crayola spokesperson.
The mummy is trying to learn how to act like a human, and can't seem to understand how to interact with people which is weird because it used to be a human and now it's just a human that's been embalmed. Flaws in the mummy mythology. Semi-related, how did the first zombie come about? The kids are also confused and discuss differences between mummies, zombies, and banshees.
Lindsay: I don't know what a banshee is.
Hannah: I just know that it's a thing that shrieks.
L: Like a lot?
H: Yea I mean I don't think it would just shriek a small amount. "What's a banshee? Oh it shrieks. Like a lot? Nah just like once a month.' There's a full moon and one, brief shriek.
L: *shrieks*
On their quest to learn about mummies, the friends go see an adult friend who owns some kind of nerd store that obviously had a huge dusty book about mummies that answers all their questions. Every movie with kids on a quest involves an abnormally large and dusty book (Harry Potter, Lifesize, etc.)
Now the kids are snooping around Kubat's now empty house and Amy's real estate agent mom explains that all his stuff was sold to pay for the back taxes he owed to the IRS, because all 12 year olds know how the American tax system operates.
Meanwhile, the mummy is now loose, just running around town and miraculously not getting caught, even while walking through a park full of people! Just a loose mummy! He eventually wanders into a hospital where yet again, no one notices him for like 10 minutes, even while his mummy cloth gets caught in a door and starts unraveling. Finally a doctor notices a MUMMY in the MIDDLE OF A HOSPITAL and assumes it's a patient who tried to treat their own wounds. They bring in a defibrillator, because he has no pulse but is still making noises, which just ends of setting his tits on fire.
Hannah: Why are they even so invested in this mummy? Like what if it's Hitler's mummy?
Lindsay: You think Hitler's mummified?? He probably has that like freeze brain thing.
Hannah: I don't think they had that back then.
Lindsay: Oh, I think they did.
Hannah: You said that with SUCH conviction. Such piercing eyes.
To mask the smell of the mummy, Marshall sprays it with a whole bottle of pre-pubescent cologne. To mask the sound of the mummy stopping around, they pretend Amy's learning clog dancing. Everything's fine.
In the real world, we have begun eating Trader Joe's peanut butter cups at an increasingly rapid pace. We are also starting to wish this movie was 30 minutes long. So much unnecessary kerfuffle. Lindsay goes to the bathroom and comes back reporting that she looks like Charlize Theron. I agree. We are absolutely definitely without a doubt sober jk.
Back to the movie, the kids have now broken into a history museum in the middle of the night because mummies are history and Egypt and whatever. Anyway, there's hieroglyphics on the wall that they are somehow able to translate.
Lindsay: No one speaks in hieroglyphics nowadays there's no way they could've translated it.
Hannah: One time I got a book on hieroglyphics at a history museum as a kid and tried to teach myself how to write in it. Like I wrote english words in hieroglyphic letters, as if that's how they did it.
L: Ohmygod that's insane.
H: I was like 'yea i'm doing it!' and I found it once and it looks like the work of a true psychopath.
Moving on to a crucial scene in the film: the kids and Harold the Mummy having a nerf gun fight. But, they are interrupted by this little four year old who catches them and sees the mummy in it's true form! This kid might be the best part of the whole movie though. He's four years old, but so weirdly buff, like one of those guys who's so buff they can't put their arms down all the way. He walks like he's a cowboy wearing chaps, but he's FOUR. Also he has a blanket over his shoulder like Linus.
Ok now the kids are on their way to an abandoned ice cream factory, because naturally that's the headquarters of the villains who have hold of the mummy's coffin, which he needs it to stay alive. Or dead, or whatever. And of course for this mission, they need to buy a disguise for mummy so they buy him a disco outfit. They walk into a thrift store, slam money down on the counter and say the following line: "We need clothes. Cheap clothes. Big, cheap clothes." BIG. CHEAP. CLOTHES.
This outfit is amazing. He looks like what Freddy Kruger would look like if he listened to a lot of the BeeGees. He walks down the street, strutting his stuff in sky high gogo boots and then proceeds to steal a little girl's bike to get to the abandoned ice cream factory. This movie is devolving.
OKAY now they are in the ice cream factory and see that Kubat is not only alive but has Harold's coffin! Instead of dealing with the immediate and present issue, the kids go to an adult's halloween party. Harold of course doesn't need a costume because he is a costume. Amy is wearing princess Leia buns. Gilbert is dressed as Dennis Rodman. DENNIS RODMAN. Dennis Rodman. But where are his all important prescription glasses? Is he wearing prescription Dennis Rodman glasses? That'd be a good band name.
(All this talk of halloween costumes reminds us of this scene from They Came Together where Christopher Meloni shits in his superhero costume and then leaves it on the bathroom floor.)
This quest is now exhausting, as is Marshall’s desperate need to see the mummy as a father figure/friend. He wishes the mummy was his step-dad instead of Ted. They have now returned to the abandoned ice cream factory to confront Kubat and his goons. Marshall finally asks this snake-looking villain why he faked his own death and he explains that the IRS was coming after him for tax evasion. AGAIN WITH THE TAXES. Long story short, the mummy beats some people up and the good guys win and the mummy goes back into his coffin, but not before being reunited with his girlfriend which they never mentioned until now.
Now that all the antics are over, the friends can hang out normally again. Except! Marshall and Amy have some pre-sexual tension that Gilbert is oblivious too. They're def gonna make out in 1-2 years, have weird relations throughout high school, maybe spend the first two years of college doing a long distance thing, break up and end things bitterly, meet again ten years later at Gilbert’s wedding, rekindle their love, have sex because they are adults now and it’s not weird, then break up again because it was never supposed to be in the first place. Plus Marshall’s hairline is receding and had a wife the night they got freaky.
By the end of the movie, we've finished the entire box of peanut butter cups. We are surrounded by the harsh evidence.
If you made it to the end of this, CONGRATULATIONS. We are mediocrely impressed. You don’t have to watch to movie anymore, but we do recommend you grab your pals, get a little zooted and check out some DCOMs because boy are they weird.
