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Movie Review: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Latest 'Mummy' should be kept under wraps
By John Wirt
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Advocate movie critic
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The Brendan Fraser series of mummy movies that began with 1999’s The Mummy needs some Batman-level reinvention. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor — Fraser’s third leading man turn as an all-American, no-nonsense mummy dispatcher — is big, busy and, with a few exceptions, pointless. A large budget, wholesale special effects and a potentially rewarding relocation to China fail to resurrect this spiritless enterprise.
In England in 1946, Rick O’Connell (Fraser) and his wife and partner in adventure, Evelyn (Maria Bello replacing Rachel Weisz), are bored to death in their Oxfordshire mansion. Best-selling adventure novelist Evelyn owes her publisher a third book, but she lacks inspiration.
So, when the British government entrusts the intrepid O’Connells with the return of a precious, jeweled artifact, the Eye of Shangri-La, to the Chinese government, the couple leaps at the chance.
Meanwhile, the couple’s son, Alex (Luke Ford), has dropped out of college to explore the sand-shrouded tomb of the Dragon Emperor. When Alex and his parents encounter each other in Alex’s bungling uncle’s Shanghai nightclub, everyone’s surprised. The gang’s all here and a new mummy adventure can begin.
Tomb of the Dragon Emperor covers the usual Indiana Jones territory of booby-trapped tombs, greedy grave raiders and power-obsessed fascists. Echoing 1999’s The Mummy and 2001’s imaginatively titled The Mummy Returns, not to mention the Lord of the Rings and Narnia films, vast computer-spawned armies battle again. It’s all been done before in better films.
Martial arts star Jet Li plays Dragon Emperor’s villain, a revived Chinese emperor. Like Imhotep, Arnold Vosloo’s Egyptian mummy in the first two Fraser Mummy movies, Li flashes much on-screen authority and sufficient arrogance; but he’s also one-dimensional, less interesting than the creepy, mischievous mummy Vosloo brought to this series’ first installment.
As for the O’Connell family, it barely registers.
Fortunately, there’s a second family in Dragon Emperor, the sorceress, Zi Yuan, and her daughter, Lin. Michelle Yeoh (Tomorrow Never Dies, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the recent Sunshine), plays the brave and wise sorceress, and 19-year-old Chinese actress and singer, Isabella Leong, co-stars as her daughter, Lin. The two actresses add much-needed soul to the often underperforming Dragon Emperor.
And strictly in the fun department, high-spirited cameo appearances by Yeti, China’s legendary abominable snowmen, definitely pick the tempo up. These big white furry guys don’t mess around.
