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Rather than an oppressive
assault on the senses, these state-of-the-art effects carry the
high-camp stamp of Cecil B. De Mille and the playful, even cheesy
Saturday-matinee spirit of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen. Evoking
Harryhausen's sword-wielding skeletons are lethal legions of canine
soldiers and pesky hordes of pygmy mummies. Instead of his snaky
Medusa, you get the Scorpion King with lobster claws, crab legs and
the chiseled torso of wrestling icon the Rock. When a tidal wave
gushes forth, it's a water rush of biblical proportions à la De Mille.
Too bad the weakest link in
this perpetual-motion loop-de-loop that barrels along like the boulder
from Raiders of the Lost Ark remains the mummy himself. Arnold
Vosloo's reconstituted corpse, Imhotep, still comes in two
not-very-savory flavors, a digital crispy critter and, after sucking
the life force out of his victims, a stocky chrome dome in a bad mood.
In 1933,
an evil museum curator resurrects the moldy oldie to enlist his aid in
conquering the Scorpion King, an ancient warrior, and gain world
domination. Assisting is a Cher-haired vixen (Patricia Valasquez), the
reincarnation of Imhotep's long-ago consort who wants her lover boy
back. In a timely if somewhat gratuitous injection of girl power, she
and Rachel Weisz, the luscious Egyptologist who has since wed Brendan
Fraser's robust adventurer, don skimpy outfits and engage in an
acrobatic, weapon-filled fight that seems straight out of Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Here, however, it's more Creepy
Tarantula, Crawly Scarab.
Weisz is
now a mummy of the maternal kind, and her 8-year-old son (Freddie
Boath, full of smarty-pants mischief) likes to mess with dangerous
artifacts when his folks are busy smooching. Fraser and Weisz trade
sexy banter like Nick and Nora in The Thin Man, but the actor
is at his square-jawed best when facing off with the blue screen. He
shines during a breathless sequence on a double-decker bus as it
careens through London while Imhotep's bony backup quartet chases
Fraser and his sidekicks.
There's
much mumbo-jumbo about past lives and symbolic tattoos, but who cares
when you can gaze at a sight as lovely as a dirigible floating in the
night sky? Though overlong and (inevitably) overdone, The Mummy
Returns overcomes the curse of sequelitis while raising the bar
for a marvel-jammed summer at the movies.
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(out of four)
