The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Lissa Coffey
Grade: D+
| The first two Mummy movies weren’t bad. They should have just stopped there. In this third installment the story has been run into the ground. We start out with Brendan Fraser and Maria Bello (stepping in for Rachel Weisz) newly retired and bored. Their college aged son has dropped out of school and gone on an archeological dig all on his own. Then the couple gets called on for one more “mission” and they run into their sun and are surprised that he’s uncovered such a big find – the tomb of the dragon emperor.
The story is just like the Hellboy story – the emperor is basically “frozen” because a witch cast a spell on him, and his army is frozen as well. And the bad guys want to bring him back to life – I say “bad guys” because it’s never really clear who these people are or what they really expect to accomplish with all this. So of course, pandemonium ensues, there are tons of fight scenes, special effects, on and on… yawn. Then as some forced comic relief, the brother gets into silly scrapes and it’s all very slapstick. Which audience would appreciate this kind of a movie. I’d guess pre-teen boys. Any younger and they’d be scared. Any older and they’ve seen it done before, and better. |