Rating: 1 Pulse
Brendad Nraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Michelle Yeoh, Luke Ford
Directed by Rob Cohen
Rated PG-13
What a difference seven years can make.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor brings a new director, a new leading lady, a new villain and new writers to the franchise. Unfortunately, the filmmakers failed to consider the philosophy: if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Instead, they broke that which was already fixed.
The plot is painfully familiar: an ancient tyrant seeks more power (and immortality), is betrayed by the woman he loves, entombed . . . “forever” . . . and then is suddenly awoken centuries later. Enter the O’Connell family to trade sarcastic remarks, bumble around the world, and somewhere in the process defeat an all-consuming evil.
One comes to expect an air of familiarity from these films. After all, this franchise has always been more about the campy fun of a popcorn flick than any kind of thought-provoking story. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you just want to turn off your brain and have fun. The problem is that the first two installments were carried by the wit of Rick O’Connell (Fraser) and his interaction with the supernatural world and now, save for occasional bursts, that wit is absent most of the film.
Rachel Weisz was smart to bow out of the role of Evelyn. Sadly, another otherwise-fantastic actress (Bello) has sullied her own good name by taking her place and very rarely convincing anyone that she is supposed to be playing the same character. The most absurd assumption the audience is asked to believe, though, is that Luke Ford, a 27-year old actor, is playing the grown-adult son of Fraser (39) and Bello (40).
The fact that none of the cast can ever make much of their on-screen appearance enjoyable is more the fault of the script and director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, XXX) than their own. Cohen has proven that he’s not a great director of actors, but his answer to this flaw seems to be to dumb down previously established characters that were already two-dimensional, photo-copy every frame from a hundred previous adventure films, and throw a mess of mediocre special effects at the screen just to see what sticks. Voila! Instant cash cow beneficiary!
The one word to describe The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is “bland.” There are worse mainstream films in the world, but not many. Trashing movies is hardly my bag, but this is one of the exceptions. The direction is phoned-in, the effects are gaudy, Fraser isn’t half as much fun as he used to be, the plot is a tired re-hash, the cinematography is uninspired, and the undead armies of the film’s climax have more life than the entire movie itself.
