MOVIE REVIEW: 'The Mummy: Curse of the Dragon Emperor'

"Director's cut" of a review in the Friday, Aug. 1 Oregonian....

"The Mummy" (1999) was a nice little pastiche of Ray Harryhausen and Indiana Jones -- welcomed at a time when everybody thought there wouldn't be any more "Raiders" sequels.

"The Mummy Returns" (2001) was a great big stupid sugar bomb of a follow-up. Its story made no sense (it plays like a first-draft brainstorming session), and its special-effects set pieces were so numerous and rushed that much of the film's CGI looks half-rendered. But lead actors Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz were still adorable, and the movie sort of squeaked by on charm.

"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" is just noisy.

This shrill, unfunny, unpleasant and incredibly disappointing third installment in the "Mummy" series takes place in the late '40s. Adventurer Rick (Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello, attempting to replace Weisz) are rich, retired and bored out of their skulls in England. Their smarmy son Alex (Luke Ford) -- now a college-aged knockoff of his much-cooler dad -- accidentally helps unleash an all-new undead bad guy: an ancient Chinese emperor (Jet Li) who wants to awaken his cursed clay army and conquer the world. Along for the ride are Evelyn's drunk brother (John Hannah), an immortal witch (Michelle Yeoh) and her daughter (Isabella Leong) a Chinese paramilitary army, a drunk pilot, a trio of Yeti (Yetis?)....

There's also some business involving Shangri-La and a diamond that awakens the undead army and Jet Li morphing into various monsters and an epic battle between good zombies and evil zombies (none of them "mummies" by any strict definition of the word).

But in a few days, I'm pretty sure I won't remember any of these particulars -- because the movie suffers from relentless overkill at the hands of director Rob Cohen ("xXx," "The Fast and the Furious").

Cohen replaces original "Mummy" series director Stephen Sommers, and he seems to think everything in the movie needs to be turned up to 11 at all times. The action is always frenetic and filmed with a shaky-cam. There are too many characters, and they're always screaming.

(It doesn't help that the gifted Bello offers up one of the worst, most mannered English accents I've heard in an American movie in years -- were no actual English actresses available? -- or that Alex is such a smirky meathead that you'd prefer to see him crushed by a Yeti instead of drawing focus from Fraser.)

Every landscape is enormous without feeling epic. The music is always squealing and soaring. The editing is always quick, even when it should settle down and let you enjoy the sights (especially when Yeoh and Li finally trade blows for a second or two). And every other line is someone screaming about how they "hate mummies!," as if we needed to be reminded what the movie's about.

Of course, the end result of everyone and everything screaming at you is that you don't hear any of it. Every vestige of the first "Mummy"'s wit and charm is buried in an avalanche of noise and motion. It's exhausting.
____

D-plus; 112 minutes, rated PG-13 for PG-13 for adventure action and violence.

'The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor' (The Oregonian, Aug. 1, 2008)

Comments

[Christopher Walsh]

First "Mummy": Left me cold. I didn't get wrapped up in it.

Second "Mummy": A kind of insanity that worked better for me, like the mummy's kiss, a good kind of ewwwwww. And Weisz was allowed (I thought) to be far sexier than she was in the first. My favorite (for a certain value of "favorite") Stephen Sommers movie is still "Deep Rising." Seriously.

(But "The Mummy Returns" is a great film to watch with a dirty mind. The mechanism to release the Scorpion King looks remarkably like fisting!)

Thanks for taking the "Mummy" bullet this time, man. I'm glad I was interested in this not at all.

[Christopher Walsh]

Another thought on the first "Mummy": when I reviewed it in '99 I felt the film was full of impersonation: Weisz (in her more fetching moments) seemed to be impersonating Amanda Donohoe, that other American adventurer (the one with the shaving cream) seemed to be impersonating Kurt Russell, Arnold Vosloo seemed to be impersonating some version of Billy Zane (his "Demon Knight" performance?), and Sommers seemed to be impersonating Sam Raimi. It added to the "been there, done that" quality that left me "meh." Even Kevin J. O'Connor, who I usually like, left me more or less "meh," though he isn't really impersonating anyone. I preferred him as Joey in "Deep Rising."

[Linda]

Thanks for this, I'll go see Tell No One tomorrow.

[nick]

the new mummy rocks it has got a good plot and good fx.