Rating of
1/4
A Complete Waste of Time
newmans_own - wrote on 08/07/08
It’s difficult to decide which aspect of the film is most ridiculous. I suppose it could be the title, which is misleading. There isn’t actually a mummy in the film. Sure, there are ancient figures raised from the dead, but they’re more like cursed zombies than mummies. Unless they cut out the actual mummification process, that is. Regardless of the villain’s post-life status, Li pales in comparison with the evil and all-powerful Imhotep. Aside from the desire to rule and control all, there’s really nothing to the Emperor. And how exactly he got all his magical powers is really anybody’s guess.
The other newcomers don’t fare very well either. Although Maria Bello is a fine actress in her own right, she seems next to useless trying to fill Weisz’s shoes. The key ingredient to the success of the first two films was the endearing charisma between Fraser and Weisz – Bello can’t help but fall short. And the last time we saw Alex O’Connell, he was a plucky British schoolboy with a sharp tongue and a taste for trouble. This time around, he’s still got a taste for trouble, but he’s been morphed into an All-American boy (rather odd, since he appears to have been born and raised in England) that’s nothing more than a blander version of Fraser’s character. One could assume, should another film come to pass, that it can’t possibly get any worse. But I have a sneaking feeling that, should the present team reunite, they would finally manage to surprise us.
*/****
Full review at http://newmanscorner.blogspot.com
