The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor

Spanks - 1.5

Director - Rob Cohen

Writers - Alfred Gough & Miles Millar

Starring - Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Michelle Yeoh & Luke Ford

Release Date - 1 August 2008

MPAA Rating - PG-13

The running gag in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is the main characters saying "I Hate Mummies", I say "I Hate Rob Cohen (the director of the cinematic masterpiece The Fast and the Furious, xXx, and Stealth)". I have only seen the first Mummy movie and that is Citizen Kane compared to this new one. Imhotep was a much better villain, the special effects were much better, Maria Bello was miscast, and this new story was stupid.

I am fully against recasting of characters, and this is a perfect example of why. Bello couldn't do a British accent for one and she didn't fit in the character at all. She doesn't even look smart and archaeologist like. They could have at least recast Evelyn with a British actress since they weren't smart enough to write her out. Emperor Han was your stereotypical one dimensional bad guy who just wants to take over the Earth and rule it with total power. At least Imhotep was after his girl that was killed when he was cursed before he was mummified. Remember the beatles that would craw under your skin and eat you from the inside out from the first? This sequel had nothing even close to scare you with... just Yeti.

The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor is about Emperor Han who in ancient China was in the process of becoming emperor of the world when he was betrayed by a which and turned to stone. In 1948 he is awaken with the help of Brandon Fraser's son. Han then must find Shangra-La to restore his powers and take over the world. Brendon Fraser happens to be in the right place at the right time to save the world from a mummy for the third time.

The story is totally ridiculous and totally unoriginal. Three times in the film the protagonist say that if Han gets past them here then he will be unstoppable. That can work saying once, but no more. What I remember of the first, it was a serious action movie, but this seemed to be an children's action movie with the jokes, dialog, and Yeti. The comic relief in the first film was Evelyn's brother Johnathan, in this they tried to make each character be funny. That failed miserably because it was something written to be funny to a 12 year old (the 12 year old in the theater sitting next to me laughed at all these jokes).