The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

There's a part of me that revels in over the top cheese entertainment like The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. It's the same part of me that gets happy when I come across an old sci-fi movie on TV that features cardboard space ships, and the ship's main computer is represented by blinking Christmas lights and a box. 1999's The Mummy and 2001's The Mummy Returns were able to tap into this part of me, so that I could find enjoyment in them despite their obvious flaws. Dragon Emperor, however, was never able to win me over. Director Rob Cohen (Stealth, The Fast and the Furious) gives us a lot of stuff that should be dumb fun, but it winds up being more dumb than fun. He knows the music, but he doesn't know the lyrics.

I certainly have to give him credit for effort, though. This movie contains stuff like ancient jewels with magic powers that can only be activated when the blood of someone "with a pure heart" comes in contact with it. This is also the kind of movie where explorers discover an ancient tomb and accidentally set off some booby traps, killing off some of the faceless hired help in their expedition. The explorers merely brush off the death of their comrades with a casual "comes with the territory". And just to top it all off, there's shape-shifting mummies, not one but two armies of the undead, and immortal witches who can summon a band of yetis when the heroes are outnumbered in battle. It sounds fun, and by all accounts it should be, but something is off. The humor and one-liners are muted, and save for the returning cast members, everyone seems to be taking this stuff a little too seriously. This is supposed to be mindless popcorn entertainment, and somehow the movie fooled itself into thinking it was epic.

Things start off on the wrong foot with an overlong and overly serious back story about the Dragon Emperor (Jet Li), an ancient warlord who swept across ancient China to conquer the land with his massive army. He eventually wished to become immortal, and enlisted a local witch named Zi Juan (Michelle Yeoh) to guide him to a secret magic scroll that could grant his wish. The Emperor fell in love with the woman, but her affections fell to his head General instead. The Emperor has the General killed, and in an act of revenge, Zi Juan curses the Emperor and his entire army, turning them to stone, where they are eventually entombed. The immortal Zi Juan and her daughter, Lin (Isabella Leong), have been guarding the tomb for centuries, but that doesn't stop it from being discovered by young tomb raider, Alex O'Connell (Luke Ford). Alex finds out too late that he has been used by an evil Chinese army, who wish to revive the Dragon Emperor and take over the world. Alex must team up with his father, Rick (Brendan Fraser) and mother, Evelyn (Maria Bello, stepping in for Rachel Weisz from the first two films), who both obviously have a lot of experience dealing with evil world-conquering mummies. Along for the ride is Evelyn's brother and comic relief, Jonathan (John Hannah), and a pilot named Mad Dog (Liam Cunningham) from Rick's old days as a soldier.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is never as fun as it seems to think it is, or as thrilling. It keeps on throwing a lot of over the top action sequences at us, including a scene where Rick and his friends are in a car driving down the streets of Shanghai as they pursue the Dragon Emperor in a ghoulish horse and carriage. A scene like this would probably inspire some sort of wonder in a different movie, but here, it's just a lot of CG and fireworks going off. The movie seems more concerned about throwing it's budget all over the screen, rather than actually entertaining us. There are so many scenes that initially start off as being promising, only to be let down by the total lack of imagination put into the screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Just imagine the expectations I had when the heroes were battling with the evil Chinese army in the Himalayas, and the witch Lin summons a group of yetis to come and aid them in battle. Then imagine my disappointment when the yetis were basically restricted to not doing a while lot but throwing people around over and over, and a lame sight gag where one of the monsters throws a soldier over a goal post-shaped gate like a football, then does the "touchdown" hand gesture. It doesn't help matters that the yetis come across as The Incredible Hulk crossed with Ewoks to begin with.

Now the previous Mummy films weren't exactly classics, but at least the cast seemed to be having fun. Here, everything's done on a lower level. Brendan Fraser does what he can, and is still as likable as ever as Rick, but the one-liners he's been given this time around aren't as good, and he seems to know it. At the very least, at least he's not restricted merely to standing around while things fly at the camera like in his other recent adventure film, Journey to the Center of the Earth. While Fraser at least seems to be trying, his co-stars seem lost at sea. Maria Bello is a poor replacement for Weisz, as she lacks the chemistry with Fraser. She constantly comes across as a stand-in, rather than the character we've come to know. The same goes for Luke Ford as Rick and Evelyn's adult son. Fraser and Ford are never able to create a real father-son bond, and seem more like distant friends than family. A lot of this probably has to do with the fact that Ford is only 12 years younger than Fraser in real life. John Hannah is back as the wise-cracking Jonathan, but much like Fraser, his comic material is lacking this time around.

What's probably a bigger disappointment are some of the new characters to the franchise, especially when you consider the talent that's been gathered. Jet Li makes for a surprisingly dull and unmemorable villain, who acts more as a plot device than an actual character in the story. He has the power to control the elements and can change his form into a three-headed dragon or a giant beast-like creature, but he seldom utilizes these abilities, preferring instead to stand around, narrowing his eyes at everything and everyone around him. The equally talented Michelle Yeoh is wasted also in her role that barely registers as a supporting part. It seems a crime that the confrontation between these two legendary martial arts stars comes across as a 20 second afterthought, before the movie goes right back to throwing CG in our face. The lovely young Isabella Leong is nice to look at, but mainly spends her screen time being enamored with Alex for little to no reason, since Alex doesn't do much during the course of the film.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor comes across as a desperate last gasp to drag out a franchise that is about seven years past its prime. While it's not unwatchable, there's just no reason why this movie needed to be made in the first place. Everyone else has moved on, you wonder why the filmmakers didn't. Because they couldn't leave well enough alone, we're left with a movie that's too silly to be epic, and not fun enough to be a guilty pleasure like the other films were. It's just a lot of bloated budget thrown at a project that didn't deserve it in the first place.

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