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DVD Review: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

This is one mummy that the producers should have left in the sarcophagus. I’m a firm believer in the popcorn movie. Movies that you can leave your brain at the door, and just sit back and enjoy. It would pain me to even shelve this in the it’s so bad it’s good pile, because this is far from it. ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,’ redefines bad mainstream cinema for me.

We rejoin Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn (now played by Maria Bello) in retirement, living their life no longer fighting Mummies. Their son Alex (Luke Ford), fully grown since the last film is on a dig of his own, having become half archeologist (via his mother) and half adventurer (via his father). He’s out in China excavating the long lost tomb of the first Emperor of Qin, Emperor Han (Jet Li) who was cursed to death by a witch who denied him eternal life.

The CGI in this movie is at time worse then TV quality, I know we followed Director Rob Cohen in post on this site, but, honestly, Rob, did you approve this stuff with your eyes closed? The acting is terrible, the action is uninspired and vanilla, and the dialogue…..here’s a sample:

RICK
Whoa whoa whoa. Sorry pal, there’s a mummy on the loose.
______

EVELYN
What is that god awful smell?
JONATHAN
The Yak yakked.
______

JONATHAN
She speaks Yeti?

Yes…there are Yeti’s in this movie. Why? It’s almost as if the writers went, hmm, how else can we get them out of this situation, oh let’s have one of the characters summon a bunch of Yetis. Cue forehead slap in 3…2…1. One has to beg the question, did anyone during the animation of this go, is anyone going to think this is borderline idiotic? I certainly hope so, because anyone who thought this was good needs to lose their job.

Let’s see…the good, there’s gotta be something right? No. There was nothing good. Nothing at all.

The original remake by Sommers was somewhat entertaining, and I’ll tell you why. Sommers took the safe route. He merely updated an established film with higher production values and CGI. Back in 1999, it was an entertaining movie. In comparison to this, it was practically Shakespeare. It wasn’t until he started adding his own “creativity,” where things REALLY started to suck.

So in short, don’t waste your time with The Mummy. Seriously. Please. Don’t.

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