The Mummy:Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (PG-13)
Scott:
Scott: Tonight I am reviewing The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
, the third movie in the Mummy trilogy. This movie finds our heroes journeying to China to deliver a priceless artifact and getting caught up in another doomsday adventure.
Mike could not attend this review.
Half of the cast of the other Mummy movies are back for this movie. Brendan Fraser is Rick O’Connell, the hero of the first two movies. That formula worked really well, but for some reason they went away from it.
Rick’s wife in the first two movies was Rachel Weisz, but she did not do this movie. Instead Maria Bello, an actress I like, played the role. Unfortunately, the chemistry that existed in the first two movies was not evident in this movie. They seemed to try and force the chemistry by introducing more romance between the two than I remember in the first two movies, but it didn’t work. It seemed forced.
Introduced in the last movie was their son Alex, played by Freddie Boath. In that movie he was a precocious 8 to 10 year old. Boath didn’t make it into this movie for whatever reason, but would have been about the correct age. In this movie Alex is played by Luke Ford. Alex is supposed to be 18, a fact I didn’t realize until after I saw the movie. He looks and acts like a 25 to 30 year old, something that made the character a little confusing. Ford isn’t really good in this movie. They tried to move the comedic efforts off of Fraser’s shoulders and onto Ford’s, but he couldn’t handle it. With his character stuck between being too macho and too foolish, I was left wanting to see much less of Ford as the movie progressed.
The last recurring character of the first two movies is Jonathan Carnahan, played by John Hannah. He also changed from the first two movies. It’s hard to place exactly how he changed. You can tell something is different though. In the first two he was funnier and seemed to have more of a connection to the family. In this he almost seemed like a regular sidekick. It’s funny when you have a bumbling relative you have to take along, not as much when he is a seemingly useless sidekick. I can’t think of any time he had to be saved in this movie, a change from the first two.
The villain is Emperor Han (Jet Li). He was stopped from dominating the ancient world only to be brought back in the modern world to try again. He has fantastic powers and can do almost anything, but seems weaker than any prior Mummy villain. Li is wasted in this role, a role that could have been played by a newcomer and not lost a thing.
Michelle Yeoh as the witch Zi Juan and Isabella Leong as her daughter Li, round out the cast.
I don’t understand how they could take a series that was so much fun and destroy it. They set the movie years into the future in order to introduce and star the O’Connell son for no reason. There was nothing wrong with having the parents continue in the spotlight. Also, I’ve never been a big fan of a sequel where some of the stars don’t come back. If they don’t want to return, you have to wonder why.
The first two movies were fun to watch. This movie is dreadful. You see what’s coming from miles away, even the jokes are obvious. The movie was written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the creators of Smallville. They have a good background in writing, but that didn’t come through in this. The movie felt like it was written full of cliché and to a weak plot.
Knowing that the director is Rob Cohen explains a lot of the movie. His directing credentials (Stealth) may actually make this movie seem good by comparison.
How do I rate this movie?
I give it a 1.5 overall and a 1 for action/adventure.
Don’t ‘tomb’ into this movie this weekend.
