The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Brendan Fraser in Universal Pictures' The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - 2008

As a fan of the first and second “Mummy” movies I had pretty decent expectations for this one. So after the high I received from the Batman sequel,  I bought my ticket on Fandango nearly a week ago for the midnight release of the film and was even joined by a colleague and his wife for the occasion.

Upon arriving at the theater to pick up my ticket, I first realized something might be up when I asked the gentleman if there would be a line forming for the film and he replied with a smirk “I don’t think but six people even bought tickets for the showing”.

It all made sense after about 10 minutes into the movie which contains more bad one-liners than an evening with Joan and Melissa Rivers.  Now, let me say this… I’ve never seen Brendan Fraser (Rick O’Connell) as a particularly good actor, but couple that with a poor script and bad direction, and you’re in for something I was literally embarrassed to be sitting and watching.

As a critic I always try to balance the bad with the good, but in this case I’d have to rank this movie up there with “Glitter”.  About 20 minutes into the film an amazing amount of action occurs throwing the viewer for at least 4 minutes into something that resembles one of the previous Mummy movies.

Overall – This was a bad attempt at making an Indiana Jones-type film, (complete with Lucas-like wipes) containing horribly Hollywood cliches, and battling Jet Li and an even worse attempt at a plot that we’ve seen time and time again.

The score… (what I could hear of it) was cookie cutter at best, but the Jet Li character’s motif was Brassy and Bombastic almost parodying the way the film was marketed!

I took the walk of shame on this one with my friends… Don’t waste your time!