The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

This is probably one of the worst films I've seen in my life, and I don't tend to toss around accusations like that lightly, but this third installment of The Mummy series initiated back in 1999 deserves such dishonor, cause it's such a bad example of film making, it borders on offensive.

I'm a guy with simple tastes, I'm not one of those people who think cinema begins and ends with Bergman and Goddard, I actually enjoyed the previous Mummy pictures, even the second one, which I know was cheesy as hell, but like film critic Michael Phillips said about cheesy movies, a movie sometimes is just "10.000 pounds of cheese on a cracker, but sometimes, I'm exactly in the mood for 10.000 pounds of cheese on a cracker." But The Mummy: Tomb of Dragon Emperor is, at best, feces on a cracker, the cracker being the amazing trailer of Quantum of Solace before the movie, probably the highlight of the experience.

I won't go into any details regarding the plot, cause, well, the plot is pretty much explained fully on the trailer. We pick up with the O'Connell's, retired and bored as well, just as I was while watching the movie. They get at again to stop the evil Mummy of the Emperor Han from taking over the world...how original, when will these Mummies just wanna lay back and enjoy the comforts of the modern age. I'd love to see a movie about an ancient Mummy , brought back from the dead, only to be flabbergasted by the technology of the present, and lay around drinking beer, watching TV, and getting fat with McDonald's. That would be more fun that all that this movie had to offer.

All of the actors were there for their paychecks, Brendan Fraser has never been more boring. John Hannah was also incredibly stupid, and the jokes they wrote for him were not funny at all, some are even distasteful. Luke Ford, playing Rick's son, not only looks like two minutes younger than him, but less charm than R2-D2, Michelle Yeoh is wasted, Jet Li doesn't have the Mummy gravitas that Arnold Voosloo had, and finally, Maria Bello; filling in for Rachel Weisz, who had the good common sense to stay away from this dregs, she is horrible, she looks so concern with her fake Posh accent, which she got wrong anyhow, so, at the end, we are left with nothing in the acting department.

Rob Cohen, man, is he getting worse and worse, when you though Stealth was really the lowest a director could get, he managed to enlighten us with an even lower level of mediocre work. He has never been an interesting director, and his campy style has butchered many movies that looked interesting, if only for entertaining purposes, like Dragonheart and Daylight, but you would expect at least, with all that money spend on these summer movies, to have something to show for. But no, no, no, everything looks poor, the action sequences are dull as hell. To prove my point, this will probably be the only movie where a sword fight with Michelle Yeoh and Jet Li lasts about 20 seconds, and it's all in slow motion. If a director cannot make a sword fight between those two modern icons of martial arts films, he should really think about retiring for good.

The story is stock, which is to be expected from a B movie of this sort, but like Raiders of the Lost Ark proved, even B movies can be Oscar Hopefuls, but there was no attempt at all with this one. The pacing of the story is terrible, the special effects are sub par, and at the end, you are left with a 2 hour yawn fest, to which you would fall to sleep within minutes, if it weren't for the loud noises coming from the speakers.

The movie is shameful, and not worth the price of the ticket, this movie is the reason why some theaters have money back policies, and had the theater I saw this had one, I would have asked not only for my money back, but for a year of free admissions, for having seen this awful mess.