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).

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D

Spanks - 3

Director - Eric Brevig

Writers - Michael Weiss, Jennifer Flackett, and Mark Levin

Starring - Brendan Fraser, Anita Briem, and Josh Hutcherson

Release Date - 11 July 2008

MPAA Rating - PG

Journey to the Center of the Earth is in 3D but only in selected theaters. The reason being is the theater must have a Dolby Digital Cinema projection system. It uses a technology called RealD, check thier website for a theater near you. Any other theater will be a regular movie projected off of a film print. To give you a heads up, you might have to pay an extra dollar or two to see it in 3D.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is based off the Jules Verne book, but is set in the present and not 1864 when the book was written. There are refrences to those characters in the film. The film stars Brendan Fraser as a volcanologist whose lab is about to lose its funding. His nephew comes to stay with him and is giving some of his dead brothers stuff which includes a copy of the book Journey to the Center of the Earth with various notes written throughout. It leads them to Iceland where they meet Hannah who is thier mountain guide. And so begins their Journey to the Center of the Earth.

If you go see this, do so in 3D, and only in 3D. As a regular movie it is nothing special and wouldn't be worth the 9 dollars. It is a family movie so expect cheesey dialogue and cheesey action sequences, but there are some good action sequences and some funny scenes. Parts of the movie were slow for me and I was more interested in trying to figure out how the 3D works. Visually the film is great, and they created some fantastic visuals and the 3D does enhance this world as things jump off the screen in your face.

You have to keep in mind that this is the first live action movie to use this 3D technology and it can only get better. Over the next few years many films, mostly animated, are going to be in RealD 3D.