tek's rating: meh and a half

Under Wraps, on Disney Channel
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Caution: potential spoilers, I guess.

This is a 2021 remake of the 1997 TV movie of the same name. And it was completely pointless. Originally I had no plans to ever bother watching it, but in 2022, when I found out there was going to be a sequel to the remake, I decided I might as well give it a chance. There were maybe a few bits I found mildly amusing, but on the whole I couldn't manage to care about it.

It starts with a monster movie, like the original did. And like the original, there's a 12-year-old kid named Marshall who loves monster movies, and his best friend Gilbert, who is scared of them. They soon meet a new girl in town named Amy, who wants to become an investigative journalist. She gets partnered with them on a trip to the museum, where they learn that one of the two mummies that were meant to be on exhibit had been stolen. And it turns out that it was stolen by Marshall and Gilbert's scary neighbor, Mr. Kubot, who intends to sell it to a collector. The three kids sneak into Kubot's basement to look for the mummy, and inadvertently awaken it by exposing its amulet to moonlight. Marshall names the mummy Harold. They want to keep Harold safe from Kubot, who spends the rest of the movie trying to find the mummy. The kids get some help from their adult friend Buzzy (my favorite character in the film), who works at a horror emporium. She manages to translate the inscription on the back of Harold's amulet, which says he'll turn to dust if he doesn't return to his coffin within three days, which happens to be midnight on Halloween.

Also like the original movie, Marshall's mother is dating a guy named Ted (though unlike the original, Ted and Harold are played by different actors). Marshall isn't happy about his mother dating anyone, even though Ted is a nice guy, and it's been five years since his parents divorced. Amy tries to convince him to give Ted a chance, based on her own experience with her father marrying her stepfather, after her original two dads divorced. (We never meet any of the dads.) Marshall is further convinced by the fact that Harold wanted to reunite with his girlfriend, the other mummy at the museum. And that's all I want to say about the movie.

Followed by Under Wraps 2


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