Review: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

There is little more pathetic than having a film franchise hit all the standard, by-the-numbers ‘here’s where all of our beloved characters are since the last movie” beats only to make you realize that you scarcely remember, much less give a damn about these people. It’s especially sad when the film keeps making reference to its own storied history, and yet no one actually tells stories about it anymore. It’s been so long since there’s been a Mummy movie that one can almost completely forget that it was the franchise that made both Rachel Weisz and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson into big-time movie stars. It’s sad that it couldn’t do the same for Brendan Fraser.

He and John Hannah are the returning cast members for this third installment in the trilogy, entitled The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and despite not looking a day older than he was in the first film, he’s playing the father of a college-aged boy named Alex (Luke Ford), who was 9 in 2001’s The Mummy Returns, while he’s busy being bored with his wife Evelyn (now played by Maria Bello, who deserves much better) in their opulent home, both reluctantly adhering to their promise to each other to settle down. Of course, they’re called into duty to ferry a shiny trinket to Shanghai only to discover that Alex has uncovered the Tomb of the Evil Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) and said trinket is the only way to wake him up. Of course, a Chinese general wants him to wake up and lead China to a new dawn of totalitarian power based on clay soldiers with spears.

The one thing that can be said for this film over the other, more famous period-piece archaeological adventurer franchise is that it has the good sense not to involve aliens. Otherwise, Indiana Jones has them beat on interesting characters and the ability to actually form a proper mystery. This film just explains everything immediately, leaving us only bland characters that aren’t as funny or clever as they think they are and action that isn’t as breathtaking as it thinks it is. Aside from one shining moment of sheer awesomeness, when the stunningly poorly-acted character of Lin (Isabella Leong) somehow manages to summon a pack of Yetis out of nowhere to beat up the advancing Russian soldiers, there’s very little here to generate excitement.

Watch a bunch of clips from the first movie in the trilogy, The Mummy.
Watch a photo slideshow from The Mummy Returns.
Watch the trailer for The Rock’s spinoff, The Scorpion King.
Watch a clip from Boris Karloff’s version of The Mummy.

Ford has the unfortunate job of trying to be in love with Leong’s character and as such doesn’t have much to work with, but he also has the voice of Brad Pitt, so hearing a twentysomething kid sound like a nearly 50-year-old guy all the time is consistently disconcerting. The saddest part of this whole experience is that Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh are both in this film as sworn enemies, and somehow this does not produce a cool and interesting fight scene. They have one towards the end, and it’s sadly lackluster. Either the fight coordinator was asleep at the wheel, or the two of them are getting a little too old for karate fights. It’s particularly tough to watch Yeoh slum through this clunky dialog and ho-hum adventure when we know she has the ability to tear your heart out with only her eyes like she did in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Save your money on this one, folks. It’s just not as fun as the first two.