Review: The Mummy Returns (2001)

This is a Resurfaced review written in 2002 or earlier. For more information, please visit this link: Resurfaced Reviews.

The Mummy Returns

Rating

Director

Stephen Sommers

Screenplay

Stephen Sommers

Length

2h 10m

Starring

Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, Oded Fehr, Patricia Velasquez, Freddie Boath, Alun Amrstrong, The Rock, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Review

“The Mummy” is back with a vengeance and this time there are two ancient evils to combat.

Brendan Fraser reprises his roll as the adventurous Rick O’Connell who is now married to his love interest from the last film, Evie (Rachel Weisz). They have a son named Alex (Freddie Boath) and continue their adventures as archaeologists. Jonathan (John Hannah), Evie’s brother, is also back for the latest adventure.

This time, there’s more to fear as a new curator at a London Museum resurrects the body of Imhotep and prepares to bring about a rule of the world. Sounds familiar, right? It gets worse.

There’s another power at work, a fabled “Scorpion King” who was banished from the Pharaoh’s kingdom to wander in the desert where he becomes the pawn of Anubis and leads legions against the Pharaoh. Wrestler The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) plays the overbearing Scorpion King.

The three powers collide in a final confrontation that is so heavily drenched in CGI it is hard to tell where fake ends. Everything looks artificial and redundant, much like the film itself. There are many problems with the film and each one compounds on the other.

The original 1999 adventure film was entertaining and carried some very interesting effects. “The Mummy Returns” is much less than its predecessor and feels like a rehash of the same plot, same actors and same effects without being the least bit as interesting as the original.

Stephen Sommers deserves much recognition for this mess of a film. Banks of money were put into this film and every investor should demand their money back. First off, some of the early visual effects in the film are interesting and entertaining. When the end comes, the budget seems to have fallen out and only the most cheesy, uninteresting effects were put in.

To say that the actors are at fault is not entirely true. Fraser is a great talent; his performance in “Gods and Monsters” was indeed phenomenal. His problem is that he continuously picks roles that he doesn’t need to act in and continuously disappoints the legion of critics who know his true potential and keep seeing their hopes dashed by another ridiculous film.

Vosloo, Weisz and Hannah were good in the original film, but here they seem to walk the screen as if in a trance. Even Boath, who does fine as a child actor, never manages to escape his two-dimensional prison. The big surprise, or lack there of is Johnson who is neither talented, nor particularly interesting. I’d rather watch Jell-o set than endure any of his performances and they are certainly everywhere.

If we spent any time discussing the plot, it would be waste as it is so limited and uninspired that even Jerry Bruckheimer wouldn’t touch it, though I’m sure he’d be interested.

“The Mummy Returns” is a waste of celluloid, a waste of theater space and most of all, a waste of time. Only fans of the mindless will find much to enjoy in this overlong, overdone wreck.