Director: Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx)Cast: Brendan Fraser (Bedazzled, Inkheart), Jet Li (The Forbidden Kingdom, Hero), Maria Bello (A History of Violence, Coyote Ugly), John Hannah (The Mummy), Luke Ford (McLeod's Daughters), Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Tomorrow Never Dies), Isabella Leong
The Deal: 2000 years ago, the evil Emperor Han (Li) was cursed by the witch Zi Yuan (Yeoh), who transformed him and his army into mummies. When Alex O'Connell (Ford) discovers the resting place of the army, his famous father Rick O'Connell (Fraser) and mother (Bello) run into him only to quickly find that they are in the middle of a battle to resurrect the Emperor. Despite their best efforts, the Emperor is raised, and now they must prevent him from reaching Shangri-La, but the only way to kill him is to stab him in the heart with the cursed dagger he tried to kill Zi with centuries ago.
Thoughts: Though the previous two Mummy films were no cinematic achievements, I found them entertaining and fairly enjoyable. Unfortunately, the same can not be said with the third installment. I found my attention drifting in and out for the first part of the film, and it only got worse. I thought it was bad when a group of yeti were summoned for assistance, but it hit a new low when a yeti kicked a soldier over an archway, and his yeti friend made the field-goal sign with his hands. It was absolutely ridiculous, and I found the film almost impossible to watch from then on. Sure there were decent action sequences, and Shangri-La looked quite cool, but I was never able to forgive the film for its early failures.
I've ragged on Fraser before, so I won't do it all over again here, though my stance remains firm. O'Connell is Fraser's best character though, and he proves decent enough as somewhat of a more action-happy version of Indiana Jones. I wish Jet Li would pick better films. He's done some cool martial arts stuff, but when he drifts into these roles, I can't help but shake my head. They are too corny and waste his one big talent, fighting. Ford fits well as O'Connell's son, but he doesn't give much better of a performance. It's somewhat expected, but I really got the feeling that much of the fault, for every actor, was the very poor script. It was quite bad, and dragged the film down and prevented any chances of decent acting.
I think one of the biggest problems with this film is that with what the story is doing (having clay soldiers reanimated), the CGI was far too weak. In the previous films, the CGI was just good enough to be deemed passible, but here, it was subpar. It's possible that there was a smaller budget for this film, so the CGI took a hit, but when the quality of the experience is hurt by this, there's a problem. Jet Li looked incredibly fake when CGI'd as a mummy, and the soldiers followed suit.
Verdict: The third installment in the Mummy franchise lacks much of the entertainment from the previous two films. It's the same level of acting, but the story gets too ridiculous and the CGI can't support the visuals that were warranted. ☆1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment