| Friday,
May 04, 2001 - 12:55 a.m. Pacific
Movie Review By John
Zebrowski Smell that? That whiff of rotting corpse, that strange, earthy aroma of a mummified body? A little familiar, isn't it? It should be. It's the smell of summer. While the nights are still brisk, the release of "The Mummy Returns," the sequel to 1999's campy super-hit "The Mummy," is the first sure sign summer is here. Bigger and more exciting than the original, this mummy flick should have no problem becoming the first real blockbuster of the year. "The Mummy Returns" could have been awful. The original was a cute, campy explorer movie nearly ruined by its transformation into a big-budget action flick. We knew the sequel would be even bigger (they cast wrestling star The Rock, for crying out loud). But would it be any good? Sure. It's big and dumb and loads of fun. Writer/director Stephen Sommers has created a fast-paced ride packed with action, good lines and a cast that keeps us interested even when the movie gets too big and dumb for its own good. This story begins eight years after the gang sent the 3,000-year-old mummy Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) back to the underworld. All the principals from "The Mummy" are back, including Brendan Fraser as the rakish explorer Rick O'Connell, Rachel Weisz as uber-librarian Evelyn and John Hannah as her cowardly brother, Jonathan. Rick and Evelyn are married with a son, precocious Alex (Freddie Boath).
Not satisfied with nearly destroying the world the last time, Evelyn and Rick are back in Egypt, looking for the remains of The Scorpion King. We learn about him in the film's first sequence, where we watch The Rock landing Egyptian clotheslines on his enemies 5,000 years ago. Despite the danger of disturbing the king, Evelyn pushes further, propelled by visions she's having of the days of Imhotep. There are so many twists and turns in the movie that to lay them out now would confuse everyone. Let's just say that Evelyn is a reincarnation of Nefertiri and must stop an evil cult from raising Imhotep again, all in a plan to stage the world's-biggest-ever Smackdown, between Imhotep and a badly computerized The Rock/giant scorpion, who looks like a buffed-up Bob Dole. Alex is a key to all this, as are a bunch of Magi, a scepter, Rick's fate and an ancient oasis that bears an uncanny resemblance to Los Angeles. It springs unnaturally from the desert and consumes all around it. Behold and beware! From the first frame to the last, "The Mummy Returns" squeezes in all kinds of fighting. We've got ancient army fights complete with evil dog warriors, sneak attacks by distempered pygmy mummies, sword battles, lots of shotguns and two sure-to-be-famous fights between Weisz and model/actress Patricia Velasquez, who plays Imhotep's girlfriend. Need an image? Think Crouching Scarab, Hidden Sphinx. With so much scrapping, the movie at times feels like a series of fight scenes strung together with talking. Things move so quickly between locations and centuries that a quick trip to the bathroom could leave you hopelessly lost. And despite all the vaunted technology, it's the fights between people that are the best. Computer-animated warriors are too stiff and clumsy to battle real folks believably. The technology works best when used to paint huge backgrounds like pyramids and cities. But this is all trifling stuff. "The Mummy Returns" is good, gruesome fun. And Sommers manages to make us feel sorry for the villain Imhotep. All this destruction - the grudges that last millennia, the plagues and murder - were for a woman. Imhotep may just be time's greatest romantic. But when you survey everything from a nice, safe distance, wouldn't he have been better off sending flowers?
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