The
Mummy
Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Why?
Will anyone be willing to show up to the theater dressed like Brendan
Fraser? Do the fans have big Mummy conventions
where they demand the
producers give them another adventure? When the answers are
“No” and “Hell, No”,
it’s time to move on.
Luke Ford stars as Alex O’Connell – the son of
famous adventurers Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn (Maria Bello
replacing a non-interested Rachel Weisz), who secretly is seeking the
tomb of the Dragon Emperor in China (and, if I was snarky, I might say
something like Ford is the inevitable future star of the straight to
DVD release The Mummy 4, but I digress). Rick and
Evelyn are seeking
the excitement and adventure that was once part of their lives, so they
jump at the chance to return an ancient artifact to Shanghai, but they
soon run into Alex, who is about to unveil his discovery of the Dragon
Emperor’s Tomb.
Of course, finding the tomb unknowingly will bring the evil dictator
back to life, and Rick, Evelyn, Alex and a whole host of characters
need to stop the Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) from taking over the world.
Will they be able to defeat the ancient, evil martial arts master?
Does anyone care?
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
feels kind of like a bunch of movie ideas were tossed in a blender and
this is the result. You can almost hear the producers and studio execs
talking it through in some sort of pitch meeting held in a smoky
backroom where they count their money and pray to some sort of evil
force that makes Katie Holmes a movie star.
“People like martial arts stuff, so let’s throw it
in."
"People like wisecracking dialogue, so let’s throw it in."
"People like hot looking young people (especially babes!), so
let’s throw it in.”
Not much is thrown in because
it was a good idea or made the story better, which is painfully
obvious.
Speaking of story, we don’t get much of one, and what we do
get is quite contrived, even when the creators try to make it campy.
The audience is greeted with an opening monologue and sequence of
events that runs much too long and could have been sprinkled in
throughout the movie to help us understand the villain in short bursts
instead of piling it all on in the beginning, only to have us forget
most of this stuff by the time it matters (in those few moments that do
matter).
Sadly, director Rob Cohen and writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
treat the movie as if it is the next Star Wars or Star
Trek with all
sorts of inside jokes and allusions to the previous movies, as if we
remember or care. I just don’t think anyone is enough of a
hardcore fan to be all that excited or tickled by these moments. They
are just easy laughs.
The acting ensemble is game, but they can’t save the movie.
Fraser is forced to be a goofball one-liner machine and has a role
stranded in some weird zone between campy and Schwarzenegger-type
action hero. Bello jumps in feet first to fill the shoes of Rachel
Weisz, and gives it the old college try by adopting a British accent
and some motherly concern for her beefy on-screen kid who is too old to be her or Fraser's kid. Even legends Li
and Michelle Yeoh deliver their dialogue with a straight face, even
though it feels like a bad parody of some sort of Kung Fu epic.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
is a bunch of action, but not much else.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon
Emperor rated PG-13 for adventure action and violence.
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