Rating of
1.5/4
Army of Darkness without the comedy
BryanFury - wrote on 08/02/08
I hate to see the rule of gravity apply to a franchise that unexpectedly brings back the audience's interests to ancient Egypt, pharaohs and of course mummies who we all loved to hate. Well to me it is hard to see the Mummy franchise reduced to a mere shadow of their former selves. The mummy 3 is something one could call a fall from grace. Tomb of the Dragon Emperor take us forward twenty years after O'Conner defeated Imhotep and by this time so many things has changed. Most noticeably is the absence of Rachel Weis who is replaced by a blander Maria Bello. Their lives is supposedly peaceful now and ordinary which is not the usual adrenalin pumping ancient exploits they were used to twenty or so years back. Then suddenly Alex O’Connor who’s now all grown up has become an adventurer himself, discovered an ancient Chinese tomb. Now everything began to spin a full 180, as Brendan Frasier like to put it “Here we go again”. I don’t like to say it but the story is as weak as it could get, ten minutes into the film I feel like getting out the movie theater. The plot is so uninteresting I thought to myself they should've pay me for having single smear of interest in an almost two hour waste of my time. The characters were unorganized and nothing can beat the old Weisz-Fraser chemistry. Jet Li is downright boring even with all his karate skills mambo jumbo. Even the old Mummy humor is missing. And probably the most important element they should have looked into is the visual effects, which is as ancient as the film itself. Although there were one or two sequences that thrilled me it wasn’t enough to stir up my famished senses. Overall they should have left it as it is and not made a sequel that is doomed to failure.
