The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

I want to say up front that I loved the first two Mummy movies, so I am not a hater of this franchise. They were campy, very tongue-in-cheek, and there was this wonderful rapport between the actors which came out in their performances. I went into this one with some trepidation because much of the main cast of the first two films would not be in it (Rachel Weisz, Arnold Vosloo, Patricia Velasquez and Oded Fehr), but I figured, well, the first two were great (or at least a lot of fun), so how bad could this one be?

Oh. My. God.!!! I am not exaggerating when I say that the best part of the movie was the Chinese-writing animation of the closing credits. Five minutes into the film I was cringingly embarrassed for the actors, and it only got worse. The only actor whose performance didn't suck a dead dog's butt was Jet Li, but only just -- he basically spent the whole movie yelling, killing people, and looking extremely cheesed off. There was no connection between his character and the audience. I mean, Imhotep (in the first two films) did evil things, but he had this romantic tragedy thing going on because he was in love with Anck Su Namun, and you could see some reason for his actions and you could even maybe sympathize with him a little bit (particularly at the end of "The Mummy Returns" when he realized that Anck Su Namun didn't really love him -- at least, not like Evie loved Rick -- and it had all been for nothing). He had a human quality, I guess. The Dragon Emperor, not so much. As far as anyone could tell, he was just a megalomaniacal twit with a world-domination complex -- there were no redeeming features in his character -- it was just a cardboard cutout of "evil." The only thing I have to say about the mother/daughter immortal protectors team is that even put together, they're no Ardeth Bay. Maria Bello was horribly miscast as Evie O'Connell. Her performance seemed clingy and desperate (not just Evie being clingy and desperate, but herself, Maria, the "actress"). Luke Ford was a huge waste of space -- I never thought I'd see an "actor" who was worse at acting than Keanu Reeves, but Keanu Reeves is a great Shakespearean compared to Luke Ford. I echo another reviewer's comment in saying why didn't they just keep Freddie Boath? He's about the right age and he was actually funny in The Mummy Returns. Of course, it's probably better for his career that he *didn't* appear in this piece of trash (ditto Rachel Weisz, et al.) -- kudos to their agents for keeping them out of it. Brendan Fraser, whose performances I really enjoyed in the first two movies (although a great actor he is not), seemed like he was tired of the whole thing -- monumentally bored and just milking the franchise for another paycheck (I know that's a horrible thing to say, but I can't imagine why else the egregious performance -- I mean, you can only blame so much of it on the rotten script). John Hannah (another actor whom I usually really like) ditto. To paraphrase Mark Twain (from "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"): the film-maker should make the viewer feel a deep interest in the people in the film and in their fate; he should make the viewer love the good people and hate the bad ones. But the viewer of "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

There was nothing even remotely funny about this movie -- the "jokes" (if you want to call them that) were either tired, stupid, or completely flat. The special effects couldn't make up for the mondo suckiness of this piece of... uh... "film." Even if they had been of the thrilling sort that one expects. Which these were not. The Yetis could have been cool, but they just, um, weren't. And the whole "field goal" thing was so NOT!

I had to give this film a rating of 1 (awful) because that's as low as IMDb's scale goes, but I'd really like to give it something more like a –27. And I'd also really like a refund on the two hours of my life I wasted watching this dog. Boo! Hiss!! Yuck!!!