Starring: Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, Oded Fehr, the Rock
Directed by: Stephen Sommers

I really liked The Mummy. It was funny, had good action and the special effects were pretty nifty. Understandably, I was very pumped to see the sequel, appropriately titled The Mummy Returns. Well�maybe he shouldn't have.

The movie's events take place a few years after the original film, and Rick and Evie now have a young son. Evie has some strange visions as to the location of a sacred bracelet once worn by an ancient Egyptian warrior named the Scorpion King, played by WWF superstar, the Rock. They find the bracelet, but there is inevitably a group of baddies who want the item. They plan to resurrect the Scorpion King and have Imhotep (the Mummy), also resurrected, defeat him, thus controlling the evil armies of Anubis. �or some such. Yadda, yadda, yadda, Rick and Evie must save the day.

While the first film was really fun to watch, this was a let-down. The action scenes were pretty good (I liked the scene with the Mummy warriors chasing the bus), but the thing that spoiled this movie was the over use of special effects. When done properly, computer effects are supposed to enhance a movie by making the impossible seem real. But these effects were everywhere. I can't think of one sequence without some computerized segment. When everything in front of you is computerized, the brain cannot believe what's going on. The effects for the Mummy himself were again very nice, but those little pygmy guys were too much, as was the dirigible. And when the Mummy sent the river after the dirigible, the wall of water it made didn't even look like water. It looked like a torrent of Gillette shaving gel. The jackal warriors were cool, but you could tell that they weren't in the scene. I thought the Rock's face on the scorpion beast was also pretty cheesy.

Some scenes and elements were utterly useless, as well. The pygmy guys' whole section could have been eliminated. It served a rather vague purpose that something, anything else in its place could have been better. And why introduce the son's mousetrap-making skills in the beginning for no apparent reason. I figured it would come up later, in a larger scale, perhaps to catch the Mummy, but no! Nothing! Man, whatever!

The Mummy Returns was entertaining enough, for a mindless evening of brain-dead fun, but unavoidably, it will be compared to the first and there is no contest. The Mummy Returns is to The Mummy what The Lost World is to Jurassic Park: a shoddy sequel. After the vomit inducing amounts of money this sequel has made, let's just hope the inevitable third film is better.

DroopyMcC
Nine

MastaCSG		Imhotep just doesn't keep it real.
Nine

ASY		The first one was so much better.
Ten