‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’ Pure Torture
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is the newest sequel in Universal’s Mummy franchise. It picks up many years after the second Mummy movie with adventurers Rick and Evelyn O’Connell (Brendan Fraser & Maria Bello) relaxing in retirement. Their grown-up son Alex (Luke Ford) is in China excavating the legendary Dragon Emperor’s (Jet Li) tomb. Soon the ancient curse awakens the Evil undead and his army. Now the O’Connells must fight as a family to defeat the massive army with the help of the sorceress Zi Juan (Michelle Yeoh).
This is one of the most outright boring movies I’ve seen all year. It’s pretty bad when an “action” movie just has you squirming in your seat. In the first few minutes of the film we are subjected to boring narrative, like a history lesson that isn’t real. This movie is insulting to the audience, constantly demanding that we blindly ignore simple logic. You can tell what the entire plot of the movie is from the trailer, no surprises. The dialogue is weak and contrived. ‘Show it don’t say it’, is a common rule for good filmmaking, this film constantly breaks that rule with on-the-nose dialog and flat scenes. The jokes constantly die, I only remember laughing at the horrible B movie moments stacked back to back.
The performances in this film leave a lot to be desired. Brendan Fraser isn’t bad, just the same old character as usual; the script doesn’t exactly give him anything to work with in terms of freshness. Maria Bello plays Evelyn O’Connell, replacing Rachel Weisz from the first two films. Her terrible British accent is completely distracting. Every scene involving Maria is made worse by her hollow and downright bad performance. Now, I’m not saying she is a bad actress, this is just one of the worst casting choices I’ve seen in a while. The same can be said of newcomer Luke Ford who plays Fraser’s son in the film, he’s only 13 years younger than his movie dad; again, the audience is not stupid. Besides the goofy casting, his performance is dry and lifeless. The absolute lack of chemistry between anyone in this bore-fest makes it an almost unbearable experience. Michelle Yeoh and Jet Li are unfortunate victims of bad scriptwriting in this film. Both of them are better than this film in every way, but I guess you can’t say no to a really great paycheck. I just hope they are given much better material in their next roles.
Visually this film manages a few cool images, but is overly laden with terrible CGI effects. You would think with a $145 million dollar budget they might be able to get past mid-90s looking effects, but no. Animated films have more life-like effects than this movie.
Don’t waste your time with this film; it is pure torture. I urge you to avoid this steaming pile at all costs. I was checking the clock to see when this thing would end, sickeningly bad. This one isn’t even worth a rental. Universal needs to get the message that the audience demands more respect than this.
| Direction - 2 | Performances - 2 | Story - 1 | Visuals - 3 | Overall - 2/10 |
-Nick Wolfwood
POSTED BY: Nick Wolfwood
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