The Mummy Returns

THE MUMMY RETURNS

Rating: B-

The thing I remember most about the 1999 version of The Mummy was that it was thoroughly forgettable. It was less a remake of the 1932 original than a thinly-disguised Indiana Jones retread with an immense helping of digital effects thrown in. Not one to let a successful formula go to waste, writer/director Stephen Sommers is back again with The Mummy Returns, a thinly-disguised Indiana Jones retread with an immense helping of digital effects thrown in.

Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are among several actors who reprise their roles from the 1999 film, as does Arnold Vosloo as Im Ho Tep, the ancient Egyptian prince who just won't stay dead. The new wrinkle is the introduction of the "Scorpion King" (played by wrestling's "The Rock") into the mix - seems his army of jackal-headed beasties is due to arise in seven days now that his golden bracelet has been accidentally activated by Fraser and Weisz's young son. But if Im Ho Tep can rise from the dead and kill the Scorpion King, Mr. Tep gets to assume control of the army of jackals. You clear on all this?

The movie is basically non-stop action scenes from start to finish, some of which work very well and others which are merely tiresome. Somewhere around the midway mark, we reach the point of digital overload - that point where our brains become so saturated with digital effects we simply grow numb and stop caring about what's happening onscreen. The worst part is the second half of the movie is yet to come, and the effects just keep getting poured on thicker and thicker. When the Scorpion King eventually does come back to life, it's in a form which not only rips off Men In Black, but is also completely ridiculous. Then when the heroes are making their final getaway, anything that once resembled a plot gets tossed completely out the window, and we're bombarded by even more visual effects. Apparently whenever Sommers runs out of ideas (which is frequently), he throws another page of effects into the script and calls it a day.

You might think that a film which relies so heavily on digital effects would at least make the effort to present good ones. To be fair, the shots of Im Ho Tep's half-regenerated body are very well rendered. However, most of the effects are mediocre at best, and many look downright crappy. An extended scene utilizing computer generated water only serves to prove the digital effects artists still can't make convincing water. Many of the particle storm sand effects look like they were lifted from a Saturday morning cartoon. Perhaps worst of all are the battle scenes; at one time, scenes of large-scale battles lent an epic feeling to a film. But the battle scenes in this movie have such a phony digital look to them that they make the whole production seem cheesy rather than the work of the next Cecil B. DeMille. Somehow, the realization that these scenes only occurred on someone's computer and never actually took place in front of the camera defeats their whole effect.