The Mummy/The Mummy Returns/Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

The Mummy — 1999

–Look, I…I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O’Connell, but I am proud of what I am.

– And what is that?

– I…am a librarian.

The Mummy Returns — 2001

–No harm ever came from opening a chest.

–Yeah, right, and no harm ever came from reading a book. You remember how that one went?

 

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor — 2008

–Mrs. O’Connell, is it true that the Scarlet O’ Kiefe character is based on you?

–No. I can honestly say she is a completely different person.

 

 

As Roger Ebert points out in his review of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, some movies are “just plain dumb fun.” He doesn’t mean this as an insult, and neither do I. In my review of The Dark Knight, I referred to my love of a good popcorn flick and in the 1999 version of The Mummy we have just that. While it doesn’t hold a candle to the 1932 Boris Karloff classic, Stephen Sommers’s version is quite entertaining.

 

Karloff brought a gravitas and dignity to the role that could never be copied. Arnold Vosloo does a fine job playing Imhotep, the mummy of the title, but he could never be Karloff. The 1999 version keeps Imhotep’s romanticism, but its true inspiration seems to be Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is an action-adventure-comedy, not a horror movie.

 

I am so glad that Brendan Fraser was cast in this film. Until it came out, he was forever in my head as Encino Man. Thankfully, he has had parts in other more dramatic films as well: Gods and Monsters, The Quiet American, and Crash. Although his Rick O’Connell is hardly the stuff of Shakespeare, it oddly allowed me to take him seriously for the first time. This was also my first glimpse at Rachel Weisz who constantly impresses me. She has been in some of my favorite movies of the past few years, such as About a Boy, The Constant Gardener, and The Fountain. Her Evelyn is a sheer delight. Her main characteristics are her stunning intelligence, and her exuberant giddiness about going into the field on an adventure. She and Fraser have an engaging chemistry that is rare and wonderful in this kind of film. One of the cutest moments of their courtship comes when he steals a set of tools from another archaeologist to give her. Despite the fact that he is the experienced man in the field, he defers to her knowledge and makes it clear that he is only there to back her up since she saved his life, not to take over the expedition.

 

While The Mummy was a funny, thrilling example of a summer movie done well, its sequel The Mummy Returns derails. I thought it was okay when I saw it in the theatre, but on each successive viewing I’ve found it less engaging. There are parts that I like, but overall it doesn’t hold together as a movie.

 

One of the first things that annoyed me was the changes to Evelyn’s character. Yes, I’m glad that she’s more self-confident after marriage and motherhood, but what happened to the woman who gleefully proclaimed how happy she was to be a librarian? Suddenly, she could fight like Trinity from The Matrix movies and had a mystical destiny. Now, don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoy watching a woman getting to have fun swashbuckling. This, however,  was excessive and out of character. It also goes to one of the fundamental problems with the entire picture: everyone has a mystical destiny. Rick, Evelyn, and their little boy Alex all have DESTINY practically flashing in neon colors from their foreheads.

 

Then, there is the fact that Imhotep, the mummy, is wasted in this picture. Come on, people, we go to see a picture called The Mummy to see the mummy. That’s not a difficult concept. Suddenly, his arc is co-opted by the addition of the whole Scorpion King storyline which is only necessary to provide a springboard for a spin-off film called, (you guessed it) The Scorpion King. (That movie is a whole other story. It makes the 1999 parent film look like Hamlet in comparison.)

 

I’m also bothered by how closely the O’Connell family resembles Elizabeth Peter’s Amelia Peabody mystery novel series. I wonder if she has ever watched this film. Alex resembles Peter’s character Ramses so much that it’s disturbing.

 

One thing I did like about the sequel was the paralleling between the human couple of Rick and Evelyn and the mystical couple of Imhotep and Anck Su Namun. Imhotep and Anck Su Namun were shown in the first film to have a love that lasted through centuries, but even after several millennia how well can we actually know someone? Especially, if both of you have been dead the majority of that time. There are still witty one-liners a plenty, and most of the special effects are spectacular. The exception is the Scorpion King who looks horrendously fake to me.

 

I could easily nit-pick the third in the franchise, this summer’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Alex has an English accent like his mother in The Mummy Returns, but in Dragon Emperor his accent is American like his father. Brendan Fraser and Maria Bello don’t look old enough to be Rick and Evelyn’s proper ages. I was initially distracted by the re-casting of Evelyn. Maria Bello is a terrific actress, but I adore Rachel Weisz. It took me about a third of the movie to get used to Bello, especially since she tries so hard to capture Weisz’s mannerisms from the first two movies.

 

Still, to nitpick the small details in such a movie is to miss most of the fun. I still like the first movie in the series the best, but this one is aided by the addition of Michelle Yeoh and Jet Li to the cast. Michelle Yeoh is fantastic as always. She is not only a gifted martial artist, but a talented actress as well. My only wish here is that she could have been one of the main stars of the movie, so that she could have been the only to finally take down Jet Li. The problem with casting Jet Li as the villain in a movie is that I usually don’t believe that the heroes could really have defeated him. I had the same problem with Lethal Weapon 4. The only way that Murtaugh and Riggs could have defeated Jet Li’s character in that film is the fact they were the heroes in a Hollywood blockbuster.

 

Fraser and Riggs have a nice chemistry together, especially in the Shangri-La scene, but it’s not as magical as that shared by Fraser and Weisz. Still, it’s worlds better than the nonexistent zing between the younger romantic couple, Alex and Lin. I cringed every time they had a love scene.

 

The franchise is feeling a little stale, but if this is the last one in the series it was entertaining. This was no Dark Knight, but it was traditional popcorn fare and an agreeable way to spend two hours on a Saturday afternoon.