National Geographic: King Tut's Final Secrets (2005)

For years, the boy-king Tutankhamun has been an object of fascination worldwide, not only for his mysterious demise... but the even stranger deaths of those who discovered his tomb... and the legend that followed, the legend of the pharaoh's curse. Could there actually be some element of truth to that legendary curse? An international team of scientists is investigating the mystery using state of the art technology to find out what really happened. It's a high-tech exploration of the most celebrated mummies ever--and their tombs--to reveal the truths about this famed curse and a series of puzzling deaths that cross the centuries.

Competent look at the topic

This feature looks at many of the matters surrounding the finding of the tomb, the principal characters, and the "curse". It also purports to find the answer to how Tutenkhamon died (I am not completely convinced). It is detailed and well resourced but could have been made more interesting (it drags a little in parts). There is also a litle too much of Dr Zawi Hawass (Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt) with his too definite opinions. Overall it is a good effort and worth purchasing. May 16, 2008

Weak

This documentary has its moments, but overall is actually quite poor. The makers had great material to go on...an intriguing story, new evidence, forensics, murder...everything, but somewhere along the line they failed to make a good summary of the recent developements in Tutankhamun's life and times. Here are some areas where they went wrong:
1. The narrator- he was awful, a man that sounded similar to Mr. Moviephone, with no intonation or excitement for the subject. A native Egyptian with an accent, or even someone who seemed to understand the material and care about it would be much better than this man who seemed fresh out of the US, as if he were narrating a football game. He says Tutankhamun's wife's name (which is said Ankhasunamun- Ahn-ka-soo-na-moon) Akenasamen! He's not just prenouncing it wrong, he's adding and taking away letters that simply aren't in any of the versions of the name. It's not the narrator's fault, rather the script writers got that detail very wrong.
2. The reinactments of Tutankhamun and his life (with actors and sets) were horribly done, with the pharaoh wearing a crown that looked as if it were made of tinfoil, and a lot of mumbo-jumbo with him walking and gazing forlornly at his wife through a curtain of gauze. The only redeeming factor in the recreations were the chariot and war scenes that actually were quite good. Otherwise it was totally techno...oftentimes the camera had blue or purple tints to it, showing the king walking in weird labyrinths of purple cloth, not in an EGYPTIAN palace where he would have been.
3. The images they showed- many of them they played over and over such as the pictures of Lord Carnarvon, and the recreations of Tutankhamun, using the same clips about 10 times. It got tedious.
3. It was too filled with conspiracy theories and conclusions based soley on guesswork. I myself, I'm saying this with no ego, know very much about this period in history, and many "facts" they used were theories that haven't been proven and are somewhat unlikely. Some of them are down-right wrong: such as the fact that Tutankhamun was an avid hunter and warrior king. There is NO evidence that Tutankhamun went to battle or even hunted whatsoever, besides the paintings (not on the walls of his tomb as the movie says) but on a chest discovered in his tomb. This chest shows scenes of Tutankhamun in his chariot shooting arrows in war and at hunt, however this is a classic scene EVERY pharaoh is shown in, whether or not he actually did these great deeds. In fact, its very likely that Tutankhamun never hunted as generally CHILDREN did not partake in this activity, and there are no records of wars that the young king took place in. The false conclusions and lies infuriated me!
4. Most of the information they presented was the same stuff you could read in a short newspaper article(there were some great ones in the NY times) and the movie didn't go very in-depth. It seemed like the movie was simply stalling the whole time, with a few facts interspersed between the bizarre clips.
If you'd like to learn more about Tutankhamun I suggest reading "The Complete Tutankhamun" by Nicholas Reeves, and/or watching "Nefertiti Resurrected" which, while not mainly about Tutankhamun, has an abundance of information on the Amarna Period. Don't waste your time with this one...get it out of the library or borrow it from a friend but don't waste 20 bucks on it. December 30, 2005

More reviews at Amazon.com ...