Dir. Rob Cohen
Starring Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Luke Ford, Isabelle Leong
The first Mummy film was hardly great cinema, but it was easy to see what people liked about it. It told a classic adventure story right out of Hollywood's golden age. Leads Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz knew not to take things seriously and delivered fun, tongue in cheek performances. Now here we are with the third film in the series. We have a new director and a new leading lady and it's a complete disaster in almost every possible way.
Rick and Evelyn O'Connell (Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello) are taking a peaceful break from mummy killing. However, their son Alex (Luke Ford) decides he wants to follow in his father's footsteps and starts exploring himself. Unfortunately, he manages to awaken China's Dragon Emperor (Jet Li), who calls forth his terra cotta army to bring destruction upon the world. This brings his parents back into the game, and they are aided by the ageless sorceress Zi Juan (Michelle Yeoh) who had originally cursed the Emperor, and her daughter Lin (Isabella Leong), who has been the guardian of the Emperor's tomb.
The plot is of course extremely silly and doesn't even bother to pretend to attempt anything remotely resembling historical accuracy. That certainly doesn't matter in a movie like this. The back story is good enough to set up an exciting adventure for our characters. The problem is that the rest of the story was very poorly developed, featuring an unnecessary romantic subplot and mostly unimaginative action scenes that fail to liven things up.
One of the biggest mistakes was recasting the character of Evelyn. Maria Bello is a very talented actress, and if you don't believe me, then see her performances in A History of Violence and The Cooler. Unfortunately, she was all wrong for this role. She spends the whole movie seemingly distracted by trying to imitate Rachel Weisz, and her attempts to play things for laughs make her seem heavily medicated more than anything else. It's a disastrous performance that hampers the film throughout the entire running time. If they couldn't get Weisz back, then they should have created a new character instead of trying to force another actress into a role she clearly wasn't prepared to inhabit.
Another serious error is the attempt to draw a romance between Alex and Lin. There is never any chemistry established, and when Alex's mom talks to him about his feelings for the girl, it feels like it comes out of nowhere. There is little evidence of chemistry or attraction between the two characters, and the dialogue written for the pair is just abysmal. This is a badly forced story point and is not helped by the screenwriter's constant stream of unfunny old age jokes directed at Lin.
The special effects are good enough on a technical sense, but not much is done with them to create excitement. The only memorable scene from the movie involves two Yetis who are actually called to protect the heroes. Everything else is pretty much a complete misfire. You'd think a movie where Michelle Yeoh battles Jet Li, it'd be hard to make it dull, but director Rob Cohen has achieved the seemingly impossible. The inevitable fight scene between the two at the end is a disappointingly pedestrian affair.
The problem with a movie like this is when it fails to deliver on its promise to create excitement or campy humor, there's nothing left to fall back on. It becomes an interminable exercise in waiting for the end credits to roll. The film is only 112 minutes long, but as the events of this story slowly worked their way to the conclusion, I couldn't help but think that mummification seemed like a pretty good idea.
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