Movie Review – The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor [ 3/10 ]

A Mummy movie that makes Love Guru look golden! How about that!

I’m going to say it out straight because there simply isn’t any sugar-coated way to say it: For what it was worth, the Mummy franchise was good while it lasted! It’s time to lock down the tombs and walk away! If The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor has not been a rude awakening to this fact, then I don’t know what is!

There! That wasn’t too hash was it?

Rob Cohen’s Mummy, the third, unfortunately falls in the category of mundane trilogies that lack any substance or appeal. To be brutally honest, The Midnight Meat Train should have been given more time in theaters than ToTDE (Tomb of The Dragon Emperor) because it simply deserved so! This movie deserves a Direct to DVD release. Period!

You begin to fear you have wasted precious amount of your hard earned dough right from the start when you sit through 11 minutes of voice over commentary on who is who and why and how and when and where and this and that and those and them and theirs and not theirs and … yes, it was THAT complicated a narration! As simple as the story line actually is, they could have done without it and everyone would have gone along through the movie with casual nods of ‘oh yeah, ok, that’s how that happens to be!‘

A bird’s eye view of the story reveals the same premise as its first two movies. You got this bunch of good folks who discover something ancient and dark and are pursued by some bad folks hell bent on acquiring the said artifact to awaken something nasty and evil. et viola! We have a Mummy movie on our hands! Does the phrase ’same crap, different loo’ mean any thing to Cohen? Apparently not. I have tried hard to understand how could a story-line such as this could claim to outrank The Dark Knight. It’s like a bunch of ideas were thrown in a bowl and 10 were pulled out randomly. Cohen probably then put his team to work to bridge the gaps between the 10 plots. I can almost hear him say, ‘I don’t care about how you do it or how confusing, absurd, or ridiculous it will sound or look. Just connect these dots!’  Is that how we make movies now?

If anything, it will be this very element of ‘everything imaginable included’ that could help the movie stay afloat. With an audience that beams with excitement when they see Yetis, Dragons, Mummies, Skeleton armies and several other things stuffed in one movie, yea, this movie could perhaps breath for a while before slumping down.

The chemistry between Brendan and Maria’s characters did not shine as it did when Rachel Weisz portrayed Evelyn in the last two movies. If it was expected that such a change would work positive for the production (like it did for The Dark Knight where Katie Holmes was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhall), it can be comfortably concluded that the plan back fired! Maria Bello’s performance was as dismal as it could have been. Jonathan was up to the same recylcled comic strip antics we have seen him do in the past two films. Nothing new to offer there.

Coming to Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. What about them? There wasn’t much to see of the two in the movie! With their almost silent roles, the two were pushed in the back drop and it never really looked like it was about the Dragon Emperor. It was all about Fraser. Sad.

The legacy of the Mummy has been severely tarnished with a tardy trilogy. Rachel Weisz was wise to part with the franchise. The movie even begins with the notion that Mr. and Mrs. O’Connell have retired. All signs inside and outside the production pointed out that The Mummy has run full course. And when Evelyn’s brother, Jonathan, himself said the lines, “I’ve seen enough mummies to last a lifetime!“, I could almost hear a silent echo of ‘Amen’ resonate from the very walls of the cinema hall. 

Movielicious Ratings: [ 3/10 ]

See image gallery for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor here