The Mummy
Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

1 Waffles!

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.