"Mummy" Shrouded In Senselessness

7 Years Later, Spotlight Shifts From Fraser To Younger Actor, While History Is Used Like A Prop

(AP)  The third "Mummy" installment dutifully sends its characters to China where they participate in international competitions of mummy fencing, yeti vaulting and synchronized senselessness.

"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" finds Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and wife Evelyn (Maria Bello taking over for Rachel Weisz) heading East in hopes of recapturing the adrenaline of adventure.

They're retired following World War II, apparently living richly off of the $800 million worldwide box office of the first two "Mummy" films. The O'Connells are British aristocrat-adventurers who have retired too young and are begging to get back in the mummy-slaying game.

The film, directed by Rob Cohen ("The Fast and the Furious") who takes the franchise's reins from Stephen Sommers, opens with our historical backdrop: a ludicrously extravagant tale of "a mythic battle between good and evil played out in ancient China," as a narrator informs.

Egypt, it appears, no longer has the trademark on mummies.

Jet Li plays the Dragon Emperor, an emphatically bad dude who in 200 B.C. - as this film tells it - built the Great Wall of China on top of thousands of servants worked to death. In his search for immortality, he's tricked and he and his army are mummified in a giant tomb.

A few thousands years later, enter the O'Connell's grown son Alex (Luke Ford).

It's been seven years since "The Mummy Returns" and fans will surely be surprised that their hero (Fraser, who's 39 in real life) has already seeded ground to a younger actor. (Harrison Ford's archaeologist action star has yet to cede to this progeny.)

Alex is just as intrepid as his parents. He uncovers the tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which has been styled on a real archaeological find: China's Teracotta Army, the thousands of clay soldiers found in 1974. They've here been reimagined as mummies frozen in time, complete with mummy horses.

If this sounds absurd, it is. Like recent films such as "300" or the new "Indiana Jones," "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" uses history like a prop - a loose costume for ludicrous plot lines.

These movies revel in telling "ancient" tales, but dodgy history doesn't lead to anything but myths. Younger generations are going to have some funky ideas about the past.

Alex's big find, as you might imagine, leads to considerable trouble that eventually unlocks further mysteries, such as a trio of yetis (they're actually kind of cool) and Shangri-La. There's an impressive chase scene through nighttime Shanghai and a giant battle sequence between thousands who have been raised from dead. (It looks a lot like the climax of the 1992 cult fave "Army of Darkness" without the comedy.)

The action is so relentless that Fraser has little room for any real comic work, which is a shame. He has to utter at one point: "Here we go again!"

With the jawline of a matinee idol but the geeky clumsiness to make him interesting, Fraser seemed poised for a more mature career after his performances in 1998's "Gods and Monsters" and 2002's "The Quiet American."

But this summer, he's packed the double whammy of the 3-D "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and this third "Mummy" - a combination that deserves a penance of at least a dozen indie films.

Ford may have the bangs to be Fraser's heir apparent, but he has nothing else to supply. Isabella Leong is relatively forgettable as his love interest.

Ultimately, there's something fitting to today's Hollywood about a 9-year-old franchise devoted to raising grotesques from the dead. One of Fraser's upcoming projects, after all, reunites him with Sommers for "G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra."

Sequel- and remake-crazy Hollywood could learn from the "Mummy" series: better to leave it buried.

"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for violence and gore, and for some language. Running time: 112 minutes. One star out of four.

[berniepeders]

They lost me in the first one when the plane sank in the "quicksand." Quicksand is a type of mud, dimwits, it isn''''t dry sand. Still, Maria Bello wants me.

Posted by bobgee_1999

She does not, she wants ME!
Peace

[smurfcrusher]

Even parasites need material to grow.

Not even Imhotep himself could get THIS mummy to walk.

[neo267-2009]

Who is the clown who reviewed this? He wants to turn The Mummy into a Discovery Channel special? The more he said about it, the more I wan to see it.

Critics really are nothing more than parasites.

[avigil2]

Part 2:

As mentioned earlier, the visual effects are quite amazing, such as when Emperor Han and his army rise from the dead, breaking out of their terra cotta casts, filled with magma, which looks pretty impressive, especially when the chariot horses are disguised as such. I realize that we''re all getting a little older as time seems to be flying by, but Fraser isn''t aging very well. One website even posted a picture of Fraser and the sloth creature from The Goonies side by side and the similarities were frightening. But I digress. The Mummy and The Mummy Returns were both fun, mindless entertainment and this new one looked promising from the marketing campaign. But mindless entertainment can only go so far and this Mummy film needs to bury itself AND the franchise and sleep for the next 2,000 years.

[avigil2]

Part 1:

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is a major disappointment. With Mummy in it''s title, I was hoping to see just a few mummies but to no avail, I found zero. The film certainly looks great and it''s visual effects are, indeed, stunning. But the the blame for this mess must go to the screenwriters. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar must''ve had too many beers while writing this mishmash. Surprisingly, their screenplays for Spiderman 2 and TV''s Smallville are full of adventure and originality where as in TMTOFDE, they forgot to write something interesting for the actors to do and say. Fraser does his cheese shtick in almost every scene and it get''s tiresome. Bello, fresh-faced, has a spot-on English accent but even she has barely anything to do. The one exciting action set piece has a chariot scene racing through the streets of Shanghai during the Chinese New Year; it''s pretty amateur stuff compared to what we recently saw in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

[darkfyreaol]

sincityq: Quicksand is a colloid hydrogel consisting of fine granular matter (such as sand or silt), clay, and salt water. In the name, as in that of quicksilver (mercury), "quick" does not mean "fast," but "alive" (cf. the expression the quick and the dead).

Water circulation underground can focus in an area with just the right mixture of fine sands and other materials such as clay. The water moves up and then down slowly in a convection-like manner throughout a column of sand under optimal conditions, and the sand remains a generally solid mass. This lubricates the sand particles and renders them unable to support any significant weight, since they move around with very little friction, behaving more like a liquid when exposed to stress. Since the water does not usually go all the way up through the sand, the sand above does not appear to move at all, and can support leaves and other small debris, making quicksand difficult to distinguish from the surrounding environment.
-Wiki

[ybotheratall]

Looks like this movie is one to see. If the critics trash it, then that means it''s great! If they love it, then it''s boring, long and drawn out.

[bobgee_1999]

They lost me in the first one when the plane sank in the "quicksand." Quicksand is a type of mud, dimwits, it isn''t dry sand. Still, Maria Bello wants me.