Shooting fish in a pond
URGA MOTW
The Mummy : Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
I will admit I was dubious in seeing this sequel. The Mummy (Brendan Fraser version, not 1932) was pretty entertaining, but The Mummy Returns was incredibly god-awful that I never even bothered with The Scorpion King.
So is this long-time-coming sequel worth it?
Not really. They try, they really do, but it just seems to fall flat. Getting back Brendan Fraser and some of the original cast was good - but they had to change Rachel Weiss for Maria Bello - and that wouldn't have necessarily been so bad, but they hang a lampshade on it which seems lame rather than funny. Oh, humour... that's a good point. I seem to remember the Mummy being fun, and having some good one liners and not too many groaners. Here, every single comic moment is telescoped a mile away and none of them are funny. Whoever wrote the jokes in this movie needs to have their comedy license revoked... most of the jokes weren't even worth a groan.
So... considering this is more an action movie than a comedy, how did it fare there? Well, there's some great action set pieces, no doubt - but the closeness and jerkiness of the camera made them a little nauseating, and for a movie set in china, you'd think they'd have done some spectacular martial arts - nope, nothing that you wouldn't see on a weekly TV action show like Stargate... Nothing was enough to feel exciting, it just seemed to be there for the hell of it most of the time.
And being there for the hell of it.... let's talk about CGI. Ok, the Mummy series has always been big on its special effects, especially computer generated - and here there's LOTS of it. Far too much - it just goes over the top, beyond control and completely unbelievable. Poor Jet Li spends most of the movie as a CG moving statue or dragon or some weird beast, rather than actually being allowed to try and act! Now an army of Terracotta warriors fighting an army of animated corpses sounds like it could be a great action piece, but it really has no excitement value at all - it's CG far away, it's CG close up... and one wonders if even the backgrounds are real. In most movies, the CG is so good nowadays that you hardly notice it. Here, it's very very noticeable. I suspect they wanted to put so much in that they couldn't spend the time or money on each piece getting it right....
So... not worth it, not in the slightest. I mean, it wasn't the worst film I've seen this year, but it's just entirely forgettable with no redeeming features.
4/10
The Mummy : Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
I will admit I was dubious in seeing this sequel. The Mummy (Brendan Fraser version, not 1932) was pretty entertaining, but The Mummy Returns was incredibly god-awful that I never even bothered with The Scorpion King.
So is this long-time-coming sequel worth it?
Not really. They try, they really do, but it just seems to fall flat. Getting back Brendan Fraser and some of the original cast was good - but they had to change Rachel Weiss for Maria Bello - and that wouldn't have necessarily been so bad, but they hang a lampshade on it which seems lame rather than funny. Oh, humour... that's a good point. I seem to remember the Mummy being fun, and having some good one liners and not too many groaners. Here, every single comic moment is telescoped a mile away and none of them are funny. Whoever wrote the jokes in this movie needs to have their comedy license revoked... most of the jokes weren't even worth a groan.
So... considering this is more an action movie than a comedy, how did it fare there? Well, there's some great action set pieces, no doubt - but the closeness and jerkiness of the camera made them a little nauseating, and for a movie set in china, you'd think they'd have done some spectacular martial arts - nope, nothing that you wouldn't see on a weekly TV action show like Stargate... Nothing was enough to feel exciting, it just seemed to be there for the hell of it most of the time.
And being there for the hell of it.... let's talk about CGI. Ok, the Mummy series has always been big on its special effects, especially computer generated - and here there's LOTS of it. Far too much - it just goes over the top, beyond control and completely unbelievable. Poor Jet Li spends most of the movie as a CG moving statue or dragon or some weird beast, rather than actually being allowed to try and act! Now an army of Terracotta warriors fighting an army of animated corpses sounds like it could be a great action piece, but it really has no excitement value at all - it's CG far away, it's CG close up... and one wonders if even the backgrounds are real. In most movies, the CG is so good nowadays that you hardly notice it. Here, it's very very noticeable. I suspect they wanted to put so much in that they couldn't spend the time or money on each piece getting it right....
So... not worth it, not in the slightest. I mean, it wasn't the worst film I've seen this year, but it's just entirely forgettable with no redeeming features.
4/10