It is easy to knock The Mummy Returns as a despicable piece of cinematic pastiche and a ham-handed attempt to cash in on a good thing. Well, in almost every way, that is exactly what it is. But it is also so crammed with a storyteller's delight and youthful high spirits that it is difficult not to smile indulgently at its antics and admit at the end of it all, perhaps a little shamefacedly, that it really was rather fun. Stephen Sommers, in going for the sequel, has cast subtlety to the wind. He intends this feature to be bigger, louder and more sumptuous than The Mummy, and he goes about this with terrifying abandon, careless of such niceties as structural or narrative coherence. And God forbid if you missed the first installment, for although some effort is made to provide a little background, this is done in such a haphazard fashion as to make almost no impact on our emotional response to the film -- if one was ever required.
Fraser and Weisz are back as the intrepid Rick O'Connell and Evie, who since the first installment, has become his wife. They also have a son (Freddie Boath), who oozes insufferable Home Alone precariousness, but by some miracle manages to avoid being totally nauseating. The family, as ever, are on an archaeological dig and discover the bracelet of the Scorpion King, which unbeknownst to them, will release the devastating armies of Anubis. To get the rest of the cast from The Mummy involved, a new group of expendable baddies are brought on to resurrect -- again -- the high priest Imhotep, "who is the only guy tough enough to take on the Scorpion King." Why this death match is desired is never really made very clear, but you are asked to sit back and enjoy the action without worrying too much about the whys and wherefores of the situation. And on the whole, with the action paced as it is, you don't really have much time to wonder.
PHOTO: UNIVERSAL
Sommers does not believe in wasting any time, and even before the opening credits are quite over, he seems to be halfway through an involved story about the Scorpion King and the lost army of Anubis. This is where Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson -- veteran of WWF Smackdown -- gets to do his highly publicized US$5 million five-second slot of scowling at the camera. He returns at the end of the film in an animatronic version -- straight out of Mortal Kombat -- which manages the scowls just as effectively, so that you wonder why they bothered with The Rock at all. It is hardly surprising, now that the studios know that they can sell anything given sufficient hype, that a film called The Scorpion King is in production and slated for release next year.
And speaking of rip-offs, The Mummy Returns is absolutely full of them -- so much so that watching it can easily be turned into a game of guess-the-movie. From predictable sources such as Indiana Jones all the way to Starship Troopers, Star Wars -- The Phantom Menace, and even a scene that looks like it got lost from Steven Spielberg's appalling Peter Pan movie Hook.
Sommers seems unwilling to leave his hands off any successful adventure film, drawing indiscriminately on cinematic gimmicks and some of the worst dialogue that Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz have yet had to deal with. But they manage to be sufficiently tongue in cheek not to make themselves ridiculous -- but unfortunately also undermine even the most basic sympathetic reaction to their characters. Sommers' attempt to go for the heartstrings falls flat every time he tries it. Unfortunately, for having created a husband and wife adventure team, there was potential to bring in a new emotional maturity into the well-worn adventure genre.
But instead he goes for the easy score, playing to the crowd with such scenes as the duels between Weisz -- in ancient and modern incarnations -- fighting the unconvincingly sinister Velazquez -- who also manages more than one incarnation -- which is a PC gamer's fantasy of sanitized eroticism and violence.
Another fault to pick with this film, and there is absolutely no shortage, is the poor timing, with Sommers failing to make the most of some of his most impressive scenes. Though one cannot but marvel at the graphics of Anubis' army, their arrival misses a beat, leaving you with a feeling that it could have been much better -- in fact, was much better in the massed insect armies of Starship Troopers, in which director Paul Verhoeven achieved much more with seemingly less promising material.
Despite the lavish production, Sommers' ambitions are let down repeatedly on the technical front as well, with some of the effects so cheesy you might despise them in a PC game -- the line between the graphical effects and the actors is so clearly visible they might be from completely different movies.
But in the end, the quality of the cast does shine through. The two stars are ably backed up by John Hannah, who has given up even the little pretense of acting that he put into his role as Evie's disreputable brother in The Mummy, content to clown around, which he does endearingly enough. Arnold Vosloo, who everyone was looking forward to seeing more of as Imhotep, was underused but impressive enough to uphold a role that could easily have degenerated into farce with less able treatment. Oded Fehr has some strong moments that aspire to the heroic tone that the film overall fails to achieve; and with such wildly improbable lines as, "You have started a chain reaction that could bring about the second apocalypse," you can only appreciate his stoic professionalism in the face of adversity.
But all that said, and all regrets that it could have been so much better put aside, The Mummy Returns is as acceptable a piece of million-dollar Hollywood spectacle as we can expect this summer, and certainly a good antidote to the moral earnestness of Pearl Harbor, which will be visited on us next week.
Film Notes:
The Mummy Returns
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Running time: 129 minutes
Rated: PG-13
Starring: Brendan Fraser (Rick O'Connell), Rachel Weisz, (Evie/Princess Nefertiri), John Hannah (Jonathan Carnahan), Arbold Vosloo (High Priest Imhotep), Oded Fehr (Ardeth Bay), Patricia Velazquiez (Meela/Anck Su Namun), Freddie Boath (Alex O'connell), Dwayne Johnson (The Scorpion King).
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