The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Review by Shale August 1, 2008 "Awesome!" No, that is not my assessment of this movie. As usual I went to a matinee today and as I am entering the theater I am surrounded by about 20 kids of various ages from 8 to 14 years (some summer program group). My first reaction, of course was to hope they keep quiet and don't throw stuff. Turns out they were well behaved and really into the action on screen. Outside the theater I asked the kids how they liked the movie and the consensus was, as one 8-year-old put it "Awesome!" However, most reviewers are saying "awful." This movie is being roundly panned by about 95 percent of reviewers and that kid's comment made me realize why I sometimes have to admit that "I enjoy bad movies." I somehow can still get into that matinee mentality, that non-analytical place where an 8-year-old resides and go along for the ride. This movie was lame. It was adolescent, with corny lines, an improbable story that seemed to be made up as the movie went along, amply explained in bad dialogue and, as other reviewers pointed out, was totally unnecessary, compared to all the other recent action adventure movies this summer. And yet, it was awesome in the eyes of unsophisticated kids who just enjoyed killing a summer afternoon at the movies, much as I did at their age, watching Ray Harryhausen movies like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in 1958. That too was Awesome! The movie opens in ancient China where an unscrupulous emperor Han (Jet Li) has conquered all the lands and realizes he is ageing and wants to be immortal. He sends his general to find a witch (a very beautiful witch BTW) Zi Juan (Michelle Yeoh) to give him immortality. Zi falls for and makes out with the general. After getting his immortality, Han kills the general and stabs the witch. But she puts a curse on him and his army and they all turn to clay (looking just like the real clay soldiers found in China). From there we go to the present, which in mummy movie time is 1946 London and our mummy destroyers Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his wife, Evelyn (Maria Bello) are living in retirement and bored silly. (Rachel Weisz must have figured two spins of The Mummy revolver were risk enough). They now have a son, Alex (Luke Ford) who is supposed to be in university but has dropped out and is on an archeological dig in China. Rick and Evelyn are approached by the British Intelligence to smuggle a rare artifact to the museum in Shanghai. They accept just to get out of the manor and go to Shanghai under the pretext of visiting Evelyn's brother who has a cabaret there. This is slow ain't it. Well, it builds up to lots of CGI, because there is a conspiracy with militarists in post-war China who actually want to raise the cruel Dragon Emperor from the dead. So, Rick and Evelyn go to Jonathan's (John Hannah) cabaret in Shanghai and run into Alex and other old characters from their past. After some intrigues, Alex has paired up with a young Chinese woman (Isabella Leong) who helps him and his family fight the bad guys who captured his parents. As indicated by the movie trailers, the crazy Chinese general succeeds in waking the mummy Dragon Emperor. He's kind of crusty at first, what with the curse and all for 2K years but his mission is to get to Shangri-La and become immortal. When he does he then has the power to turn into a three-headed, flying, fire spewing dragon as well as some other kind of hairy beast, plus he can control the elements of water, earth and fire. Oh, you may have noticed there are Yeti's here also. It really gets rowdy. Rick Fighting the Undead Again The clay soldiers come to life, but Zi gives a chant and brings back all the skeletal enemies of the Dragon Emperor that he buried under the Great Wall. Armies of bones meet armies of clay, with people in there battling each other and the undead. A senseless, boisterous and loud, B-movie for a summer afternoon. Awesome!
I have to say that if you're just in the movie house to spare time, then maybe you will actually enjoy this a bit. Brendan Frazer has lost his "Mummy" aura. But it was nice to see Maria Bello on screen. It was boring, noisy without making sense.
I loved the part when the zombies lost various body parts and had to pick them up! LOL. That always gets to me! Love the dragon and the clay army as well. The new actress playing the wife / mother role, I didn't care for.
If you're looking for a ton of mindless action and special effects, this is the movie to watch. If you're going for story, this isn't the best movie to go see. I thought it was pretty interesting, but didn't deliver in the story department like the first two. I felt that while it was pretty cool, the people behind it were bent solely on using as many special effects as possible.
they should of called it: Attack of the Clay Dummies. And the cast would have been better if they was Crash Up dummies.. Ill bet the Crash Up dummies need the work too, with the GM bailout and all.
