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Last Updated: Nov 14, 2008 - 12:49:26 PM |
*** 1/2 out of five
The Mummy movies have always been the sort of quintessential summer popcorn flick: big-budget spectacle, laden with special effects, likely to fall apart if thought about too hard, but still entertaining enough for a few hours. They’re campy, doofy adventure films, and they’re not ever going to be considered as great cinema.
Yet as fluffy summer diversions, the Mummy films are oddly satisfying – yes, including this latest entry in the saga.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is similar in formula to its predecessors, though ahead by over a decade (1946) and now in China, instead of Egypt; this time, the reawakened mummy is (no surprise) the Dragon Emperor (Jet Li), a Chinese tyrant who sought immortality from a witch (Michelle Yeoh) who spurned and cursed him instead.
The task of sending the Emperor back to where he belongs falls, of course, on adventurers Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn O’Connor (Maria Bello, subbing for Rachel Weisz). The O’Connells, though officially retired from the game, have been bored stiff with their relaxed lives, and have seized on the chance to deliver a priceless diamond back to Shanghai.
And so, when they encounter the reanimated emperor in Shanghai, the fun begins.
It’s all very silly, of course, and fantastically over-the-top and corny. Sometimes the jokes are just too corny – a vomiting yak prompts one character to comment, “The yak yakked” and the audience to groan – and most of the characters have the physical invulnerability of an “A-Team” villain. People get shot, or stabbed, or caught in an exploding car, or dragged through the streets of Shanghai, and manage to walk away.
And yes, perhaps the characters don’t always work. Luke Ford, as the O’Connells’ teenage son, looks more like Fraser’s brother than his kid, though he turns in a pretty decent job. Maria Bello is game enough as Evelyn, but it’s hard to watch her performance without comparing her to Rachel Weisz, who already made the role her own. (However, others, like Michelle Yeoh, are excellent.)
Still, something about this new Mummy entertained me on some basic level. Warts and corniness and vomiting yaks and all, I had fun watching it. In a word, it entertained me – accomplishing one of the most fundamental rules of film. In a week, two weeks, I might not be able to recall the details of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, outside of high-powered explosives or expansive armies of the undead. But while I sat in the theatre, I enjoyed myself.
To be fair, I didn’t ask much of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I asked merely that it retain that sense of goofy, unrealistic adventure the first two films were known for; and it gave me that. So if I had, maybe I would have been disappointed. As it stands, however, I’ll admit I was pretty content with what I got.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor runs 112 minutes and is rated PG-13 for action adventure and violence. Viewed at Commonwealth 20.
ereel@villagepublishing.com | 751-0421
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