The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Goofy Brendan Fraser movies just work for me. You can go all the way back to Encino Man and see a career littered with these big goofy, mostly innocent movies. He works in them. He just knows how to make those kinds of movies. You can put me in the column of people who loved the first two Mummy movies, not because they are amazing movies, but because they were fun. I was not thrilled about Rob Cohen (XXX and Stealth) taking over the directing duties and was even less thriller when Rachel Weitz dropped out of the film, due to script issues. That is never a good sign. However, Fraser was in it and he perfectly delivered in the trailer with the line "Yeah, same Mummy...twice." It missed the three-quel summer of last year, but here it is; a third mummy movie.

With a prologue that eats up an unnecessary 10-15 minutes, we learn an emperor (unnamed!) wanted to rule all of China and then the world, but he knew he would die. He had to "defeat death" and found a woman who could help him. The woman fell in love with the general of the emperor's army and instead of giving the emperor eternal life, she cursed him and his whole army. Oh, it should be noted that the emperor had control of the FIVE elements, including WOOD and METAL. Captain Planet did not have METAL or WOOD and Captain planet knows the elements, Rob Cohen does not. Cut to goofy Rick O'Connell trying to learn how to fly fish, in the one scene of pure innocent goofiness. He and his wife are rich and bored, secretly missing the risky life of killing mummies. Conveniently they get the opportunity to take some priceless artifact to China, where Mrs. O'Connell's brother inexplicably owns a night club. Oh and the O'Connell son is now 20 and a budding archaeologist. 30 minutes into the movie, the tomb is finally discovered and due to some weird back stabbing thing, the Mummy is resurrected, partly. He has to walk through the pool of Eternal life to go back to human looking form and become a shape shifter. Some other stuff happens, like weird sexual discussions between father and son; a realty bad acting Asian girl is immortal, Jet Li, as the emperor takes off his face and chucks it at the son...there is one more thing..oh yes YETI (I am not sure how to pluralize Yeti. I think ti stays Yeti). Not only does the movie feature three Yeti, they are good guys, with senses of humor...Oh and they somehow understand Chinese. It is a neat trick!

I am often a proponent of the BIG DUMB action movie during the May-August months. I enjoy turning my brain off and enjoying dumb fun. However, there is only so much one man can take. The Mummy 3 goes beyond what I, as a human being with common sense, can take. Whatever innocent fun was had the first two installments is replaced by awkward conversations, noise, atrocious dialog and very very bad acting. The new cast members, are all excruciatingly bad, but Maria Bello shines in her suck. Usually a strong actress, Bello does not have what it takes to play a character in these types of movies. Her mugging gets painful and she is obviously uncomfortable doing this type of movie. Fraser doesn't appear terribly interested in what is going on either. In the first Mummy we got to know the mummy a bit, but here, the mummy is nameless and characterless. He can control basically everything, but somehow never manages to kill anyone! He is the dumbest supernatural entity to ever be on screen, I think. Even the little girl in the Ring was killing people! This Mummy just growls and yells a lot.

There is also way to too much bad CGI. When the emperor turns into a 3 headed dragon (for seemingly no reason) or when he turns into..ummm I am not sure what it was, some kind of bear like beast, the CGI just doesn't look that impressive. When I got home at the end of the night Peter Jackson's King Kong was on and like the movie or not, King Kong was damn impressive looking. Rob Cohen just doesn't know what he is doing. Michael Bay is often criticized for the lack of hear tor soul in his movies, but Bay's movies are like The Grinch at the end of the story compared to Cohen's. Much of the story doesn't make logical sense, but it is not confusing because every line of dialog is expository. The only way to kill the emperor was to stab him in the heart with a special knife and we know this because we were told it no less than 7 times throughout the movie. I think every character said it too.

At the end of the movie there is a mass battle between good undead guys and bad undead guys, but never once did any of the undead guys stop for second and marvel that they were sort of alive again. The undead general didn't even hesitate when he saw the love of his life was still alive THOUSANDS OF YEARS LATER! I don't care how much you want to kill someone, if your lover from thousands of years earlier was somehow still alive, you would probably pause for a second and wonder "Wait, what?" Am I nitpicking? Possibly, but when a movie isn't entertaining, you start to pick apart the logical flaws.

I was not asking from much in this movie; I just wanted to be entertained. I was not. It failed on the very basic level in which a movie can fail. A movie with mummies, three headed dragons and YETI(!) should entertain. It should be easy for a movie to be entertaining when an undead army is fighting an undead army. Sadly, the best thing in this movie isn't even a fight, or an effect, it is a single line uttered by Fraser in the middle of a fight. He turns to his wife and says "From now when I say 'We've been in worse things than this' this will be the worse thing I am talking about." Thank you Brendan Fraser for still finding a way to make me laugh, even when you so obviously didn't want to be there.

Final Grade: D