Starring: Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, John Hannah, Luke Ford
Directed by: Rob Cohen
Written by: Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
What I liked about the first “The Mummy” (and to a lesser extent, the second one too), was that it was silly and fun. It wasn’t a good movie but it was good fun. The latest installment is not silly, good, or fun. Instead what director Rob Cohen has given us is a boring, patience testing dud of a movie that not only sucked all of the energy out of a sold out theatre but also, at times completely sucked out my will to live. Well, at least to live through the rest of the movie.
Though I had a host of reason not to like this movie, in retrospect, I should have known how bad this would be before I even set one soda sticky shoe in the theatre. How? Two words: Maria Bello. I have never liked Bello and after sitting through the full screen close-up of her ass in “The Cooler” (William H. Macy had a more youthful looking ass in that movie if you can believe it), I have been suffering a complete lack of interest in watching Bello do anything. My corneas are still in therapy and barely speaking to me.
One of the reasons “The Mummy” worked was because the cast was so likeable and goofy that they elevated the mediocre material so that it was kind of fun and charming. A bad movie can be a guilty pleasure if it has a good cast. And for me, Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and particularly John Hannah, made the first movie a guilty pleasure. So for me, the loss of Weisz was an especially bad blow to the third installment. The decision to replace the actress (rather than ditch the character all together) was ill advised. Replacing Weisz with an actress as bland and lifeless as Bello is just plain stupid. When you factor in the added bonus that Bello can not affect a believable or consistent British accent throughout the movie, one can not help but wonder if Cohen was intentionally trying to tank the franchise before they ever even released the movie.
If the miscasting of Evelyn O’Connell was not enough, then the inexplicable casting of Isabella Leong as son Alex O’Connell’s love interest was an even bigger blunder. Leong seemed slightly bucktoothed and had a voice that could grate granite. Leong’s voice kind of sounded like a 12 year old girl ADR’d the voice for the actress. It was sort of like watching a badly dubbed movie but only one person was affected. I don’t think that particular part of movie was meant to be funny, but it was the only thing I laughed at.
This brings me to the script. In the previous movies, even the most eye roll inducing of lines could elicit a chuckle from me because the movie was supposed to be silly. The “jokes” don’t cut it here. I haven’t felt such a disinclination to laugh since the premiere of “Cavemen” on TV last year. The story was a weird mix of fairytale, history, and Grandpa Simpson travelogue. If Abe were explaining the movie, I imagine he would explain the story something like this: “We would travel by plane through the mountains and then we’d hitch a riiiide with the Yeti to the pool of everlasting life. We called it Shangri-la. We wore thin cotton tights in the freezing snow, which was the fashion in those days, and we fought our way through the Styrofoam snow jungle to meet the cursed garden gnome emperor.” Suffice it to say, I really wish Abe Simpson had narrated the scenes rather than having to watch them play out on the screen as they were. Judging by this and the other items under Gough and Millar’s belts, someone needs to string them up by their fingers so that they are not able to write any more crappy dialogue.
About the only thing I did like were some of the special effects. The transformation from human to terra cotta warrior was neat, as was the galloping terra cotta horses. But a few bits of eye candy can not begin to make up for the other hour and a half of frustration and boredom. If I had wanted to spend my Friday night anxious to jump out of my skin and run screaming from the room, I would have gone on a date. As it was, there I was in my favorite place in the world and resenting every minute of it.
Should you see this movie? No. God, no. A white hot thousand suns of no to that. In fact, given the choice of fighting the undead Dragon Emperor or watching the movie about him, I’d rather kick him in the shins and go a round with him. As awesome as Michelle Yeoh and Jet Li are, the five minutes we see them doesn’t even make this movie worth the effort. It just makes me a little sad.
Though I had a host of reason not to like this movie, in retrospect, I should have known how bad this would be before I even set one soda sticky shoe in the theatre. How? Two words: Maria Bello. I have never liked Bello and after sitting through the full screen close-up of her ass in “The Cooler” (William H. Macy had a more youthful looking ass in that movie if you can believe it), I have been suffering a complete lack of interest in watching Bello do anything. My corneas are still in therapy and barely speaking to me.
One of the reasons “The Mummy” worked was because the cast was so likeable and goofy that they elevated the mediocre material so that it was kind of fun and charming. A bad movie can be a guilty pleasure if it has a good cast. And for me, Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and particularly John Hannah, made the first movie a guilty pleasure. So for me, the loss of Weisz was an especially bad blow to the third installment. The decision to replace the actress (rather than ditch the character all together) was ill advised. Replacing Weisz with an actress as bland and lifeless as Bello is just plain stupid. When you factor in the added bonus that Bello can not affect a believable or consistent British accent throughout the movie, one can not help but wonder if Cohen was intentionally trying to tank the franchise before they ever even released the movie.
If the miscasting of Evelyn O’Connell was not enough, then the inexplicable casting of Isabella Leong as son Alex O’Connell’s love interest was an even bigger blunder. Leong seemed slightly bucktoothed and had a voice that could grate granite. Leong’s voice kind of sounded like a 12 year old girl ADR’d the voice for the actress. It was sort of like watching a badly dubbed movie but only one person was affected. I don’t think that particular part of movie was meant to be funny, but it was the only thing I laughed at.
This brings me to the script. In the previous movies, even the most eye roll inducing of lines could elicit a chuckle from me because the movie was supposed to be silly. The “jokes” don’t cut it here. I haven’t felt such a disinclination to laugh since the premiere of “Cavemen” on TV last year. The story was a weird mix of fairytale, history, and Grandpa Simpson travelogue. If Abe were explaining the movie, I imagine he would explain the story something like this: “We would travel by plane through the mountains and then we’d hitch a riiiide with the Yeti to the pool of everlasting life. We called it Shangri-la. We wore thin cotton tights in the freezing snow, which was the fashion in those days, and we fought our way through the Styrofoam snow jungle to meet the cursed garden gnome emperor.” Suffice it to say, I really wish Abe Simpson had narrated the scenes rather than having to watch them play out on the screen as they were. Judging by this and the other items under Gough and Millar’s belts, someone needs to string them up by their fingers so that they are not able to write any more crappy dialogue.
About the only thing I did like were some of the special effects. The transformation from human to terra cotta warrior was neat, as was the galloping terra cotta horses. But a few bits of eye candy can not begin to make up for the other hour and a half of frustration and boredom. If I had wanted to spend my Friday night anxious to jump out of my skin and run screaming from the room, I would have gone on a date. As it was, there I was in my favorite place in the world and resenting every minute of it.
Should you see this movie? No. God, no. A white hot thousand suns of no to that. In fact, given the choice of fighting the undead Dragon Emperor or watching the movie about him, I’d rather kick him in the shins and go a round with him. As awesome as Michelle Yeoh and Jet Li are, the five minutes we see them doesn’t even make this movie worth the effort. It just makes me a little sad.
Excellent review. This film is very bland.
I like Bello, but she tries way too hard to...just way too hard here and fails.
The film is waste on many levels.