'The Mummy Returns' may be the least original motion picture ever, and there's a lot of competition for that title these days. It even beats its 1999 predecessor, 'The Mummy,' because at least the first film wasn't stealing from itself in addition to the collected works of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and Universal's 1930's genre films. This enterprise is to the movies what an average boy band is to pop; just because there's an audience for it doesn't mean it's any good.
The screenwriter Robert Towne ('Chinatown') once asserted that an audience will give a movie 10 minutes, believing that a picture doesn't have to put the pedal to the metal from the outset and that viewers will allow it to find a rhythm. We'd be lucky if 'The Mummy Returns' had 10 minutes of quiet, since it's crammed with enough action to make the Indiana Jones movies seem like a Henry James novel. Yet the noisome action sequences of 'The Mummy Returns' are preferable to the quiet times, when the cast is limited to spouting dialogue that is a banal combination of exposition and homily.
It's probably a good thing that 'The Mummy Returns' is stuffed with action. The only thing close to an original notion in this movie is that the hard-charging adventurer, Rick (Brendan Fraser, who has the sense of humor that Harrison Ford used to fall back on), and the archaeologist, Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), have married since the first film and are raising their 8-year-old son, Alex (Freddie Boath). The idea that action figures are capable of an adult attachment is almost revelatory; it makes us believe the movie might be invested in an emotionally honest moment or two, and that 'The Mummy Returns' might also be stealing from 'The Thin Man' series. But the closest thing to wit comes in the action scenes, for example when a double decker bus is turned into a convertible. The movie comes to life only during the martial portions, when two or three climactic battles are often yoked.
Both Alex and Evelyn are endangered (though she is much tougher than she was in the first 'Mummy') because Alex has strapped on the dangerous bracelet of the Scorpion King. 'You've started a chain reaction that could lead to the next apocalypse,' Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr), the stalwart good guy, growls ominously, apparently unaware that since the action takes place in 1933, the audience has already figured out that the apocalypse did not happen.
The group has to slice and shoot its way through scores of extras and computer-generated assailants, and dodge trap doors, hidden chambers and scorpions with vocal cords -- they chatter like teenagers on cell phones -- on the way to a showdown with the Mummy himself, Imhotep (the poorly used Arnold Vosloo, who only gets to glower and flex his lats).
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'The Mummy Returns' pillages old movies the way the scavengers in these films steal from the sacred tombs. One scene includes lifts from both the 'Star Wars' films -- Imhotep does a Darth Vader -- and 'The Wizard of Oz.' The technique of Stephen Sommers, who returns as writer and director, brings to mind the credo of the comic book hero Hawkman, 'using the weapons of the past today.' Mr. Sommers goes all the way back to the he-man camp of the director Howard Hawks and to George Stevens's 'Gunga Din.' (To be sure, Mr. Playstation 2 roms downloads. Lucas and Mr. Spielberg also owe Hawks royalties.)
Mr. Sommers's pilfering might be tolerable if he had a lighter touch, but he seems determined to leave as many thumbprints at the scene of the crime as possible, a 'stop me before I commit this crime again' motif. Yet the picture is energetic and unashamedly unoriginal and occasionally diverting, sometimes on purpose. The battles have a pro forma breathlessness, and Mr. Fraser's shaggy drollery provides a tone the director isn't quite up to. The actor slows down his Canadian cowpoke delivery even more than usual, so his eye-of-the-storm timing becomes the joke instead of his awful lines.
Ms. Weisz is fun to watch when she has a chance to mock her lines and isn't staring off into the distance at a flashback from a previous life, as in a Shirley MacLaine autobiography. In 'The Mummy Returns,' Evelyn discovers she was an Egyptian princess in a past life, and we learn that satraps were white; this picture 'is just drenched with historical goodies like that,' to quote the film 'The Producers.'
In an ensemble from the 'Terry and the Pirates' collection, everyone left standing in the previous 'Mummy' reprises his role, including the adroit John Hannah as Jonathan, Evelyn's craven brother. Even some who weren't left standing come back, like Patricia Velasquez, as the oft-reincarnated Anck-Su-Namun, though her performance here suggests she's channeling Jaye Davidson from 'The Crying Game.'
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In this movie for 9-year-old boys of all ages, there's a scene for older boys, too; Ms. Velasquez and Ms. Weisz have a back-in-the-day blade fight in Merrie Olde Egypt with flips and splits that make it look more like a number put on by the dancers from the Bada Bing. The black villains, like Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje playing a thug in a rough-trade outfit to show off his midriff and dancing pecs, are depicted in a way that may send a chill through you. Sometimes this movie is old-fashioned in the wrong ways.
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Can the movies continue to create a sense of wonder? With the assistance of computer-enhanced special effects, they can put anything on screen, and yet, as 'The Mummy Returns' demonstrates, they sometimes do it so clumsily. Some of the effects are so laughable they barely seem to be in the same movie with the actors.
Mr. Sommers obviously loves old movies and wants his picture to evoke the awe that David Lean's 'Lawrence of Arabia' instilled, but he can't sit still. His sweeping scene of the desert is populated with computer-generated dog warriors -- the troops of the god Anubis -- with no difference in their movement. (Another throw-away scene, featuring a trip on a dirigible, is tossed out so the airship can become the Millennium Falcon while being chased by a wall of water. This may make children ask why dirigibles aren't still being used if they're as fast as helicopters.)
The opening of 'The Mummy Returns' -- which a title says takes place in Thebes in 3067 B.C., as if that matters -- is like the opening of a video game, the part you scroll past to get to the action. Eureka tv show on netflix. The Rock, as the Scorpion King, makes one of his brief appearances, and when he pleads to Anubis to help, with his arms flexed, it's as if he's challenging Stone Cold Steve Austin to a Texas Death Match on pay-per-view. (Perhaps the Scorpion King had to sell his soul to the devil for those pearly white teeth; they gleam like the treasures of the Nile.)
The only question 'The Mummy Returns' presents that you may want answered is, what agent got the Rock $5 million for about 10 minutes of screen time? I want that guy's phone number.
'The Mummy Returns' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some strong language, intense sequences and violence, including the slaughter of what must be an entire hard drive's worth of computer-generated creatures of all sorts.
THE MUMMY RETURNS
Written and directed by Stephen Sommers; director of photography, Adrian Biddle; edited by Bob Ducsay; music by Alan Silvestri; production designer, Allan Cameron; produced by James Jacks and Sean Daniel; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 125 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
WITH: Brendan Fraser (Rick O'Connell), Rachel Weisz (Evelyn/Nefertiri), John Hannah (Jonathan), Arnold Vosloo (Imhotep), Oded Fehr (Ardeth Bay), Patricia Velasquez (Meela/Anck-Su-Namun), Freddie Boath (Alex), the Rock (the Scorpion King), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Lock-Nah) and Shaun Parkes (Izzy).
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