Overrated and overhyped

Dreadfully Boring

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Although I had the murderer pretty well figured out way before the end, this Charlie Chan film is still a pretty good one with Warner Oland of Sweden giving a grand interpretation of the celebrated Chinese sleuth from Honolulu.There are some superficial resemblances to the classic Boris Karloff feature The Mummy as the setting of this film is Egypt and an archaeological expedition. The death of Lord Carnarvon shortly after he opened King Tutankhamen's tomb was subject matter for many a story with an Egyptian setting. But while Karloff's The Mummy dealt with sinister supernatural forces from the ancient past, Charlie Chan In Egypt has some very human murderer with some very human motives.Charlie Chan who has been hired by a French Museum to oversee their interests arrives in Egypt and the daughter of the expedition leader Pat Patterson gets Warner Oland to go out to the dig and find her father George Irving who hasn't been heard from in 3 months. He finds him all right, in the mummy's case all wrapped in white linen with a bullet in the chest. Later on Patterson's brother James Eagles is killed with a very clever device that emits poison gas.Pat Patterson had a minor career in the Thirties and retired from the screen after she married Charles Boyer. In only her second film Rita Hayworth under her real name of Rita Cansino plays a mysterious Egyptian girl who adds a bit of decoration in a bit role. Nothing mysterious about Stepin Fetchit who sadly paraded his usual stereotype in his role as the camp errand runner.I think you'll figure this one pretty early, but no reason you still won't enjoy Charlie Chan In Egypt.

Some unbearable racial stereotyping colonialist style mars this already weak entry to the pulpy, but sometimes agreeable Charlie Chan canon.Throw all the Egyptian clichés you can come up with together with all the usual whodunit ingredients, add a predictable plot with bland love interests and a boring denouement, and you get this silly murder mystery. There are certainly many stronger early episodes preferable to this.Oland is as great as always.Not even good enough for rainy Sunday afternoons.3 out of 10 secret tombs

Charlie Chan is in Egypt this go around when he gets called to investigate how various Egyptian treasures have ended up in private collections rather than the group to whom they were supposed to go. As with many Chan adventures, murder plays a role in the proceedings and it is up to Charlie to solve the case before an entire family ends up dead.The set design of this movie is wonderful. It captures the art deco of the 1930s mixed with the Egyptian craze of the 1920s. The plotting leaves some holes, particularly with the character of Nadya who spends a portion of the movie acting as though she has something to hide, but ends up serving no real purpose, not even as a red herring.As many people have noted, the main problem of the film is Stepin Fetchit. Besides the obvious racism intended with the character, he literally adds nothing to the movie. He drags down his scenes with mostly incomprehensible dialogue, and doesn't even work in the comic relief manner for which he was intended. Otherwise, this is a decent to good Fox-era Charlie Chan film.

Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) finds mystery and murder, naturally, in the secret chambers of an Egyptian tomb, amid lots of hocus-pocus about figurines and ornaments with mysterious powers. With a runtime of just 73 minutes the story is rather thin, and the whodunit puzzle isn't very good. But I suspect the film's appeal in 1935 had more to do with the novelty of Egyptian decor and production design than with the film's plot, some of which is not explained. And I did not like the Snowshoes character, at all. He may have been included as comic relief, but there is nothing about him that is funny, and the character is irrelevant to the whodunit puzzle. The actor playing the part whines and mumbles in a most disagreeable manner. I found him truly annoying.The film's B&W cinematography is marginally acceptable. However, in the copy I watched the images were grainy. At the film's beginning, they used stock footage of Egyptian sites to foster the illusion of being in Egypt. Acting ranges from acceptable to laughably melodramatic. The man playing Barry Arnold, in particular, dreadfully overplays his role, with those bug-eyed histrionics.Although "Charlie Chan In Egypt" is not a complete waste of time, there are other films in the Charlie Chan series that are much better.