The Mummy - Tomb of the Dragon EmperorJust when I thought I could finally enjoy a good movie after all these few hectic weeks, I was left wanting.
The Mummy – parts 1 and 2 – had a great deal going for them. A charismatic lead actor and actress, and a rather compelling “Indiana Jones” type of storyline that is rare in movies these days.
So I had expected Part 3 to be at least equally, if not more, entertaining and engaging as the last two.
Sadly this was not to be the case. Part 3 turned out to be a sad mixture of a cheesy one-liners with awfully weak references to the last 2 movies, badly spoken mandarin, poor character developments, predictable situations and unrealistic backdrops… I could just keep going. Sigh.
In a nutshell, if you haven’t seen ‘The Mummy – Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’ at the cinema, my advice is, don’t bother.
Just wait for the Dvd release, and rent it from the shops ONLY when it moves to the special offer shelves.
Warning: Movie spoilers ahead. If you still insist on watching The Mummy for yourself to experience the sad excuse of a movie, then please stop reading here.There were just so many things that they did wrong this time.
The third installment brings us to China, where the “Mummy” takes the form of an resurrected evil emperor in the form of Jet Li. The cute young son from the second series is now grown up man (Luke Ford) and his parents (Brendan Fraser & Maria Bello) are “retired”. The notable supporting cast consist of Michelle Yeoh and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (Infernal Affairs) and many CGI mummies.
If you are a fan of the first 2 installments, you would immediately notice that Rachel Wise is no longer the Wife. What’s up with that? Brendan and Rachel Weisz had a very engaging on-screen chemistry. They could have been the new “Indiana Jones” type of action-hero-heroine combination. The new stand in - Maria Bello - just doesn’t seem to fit the role at all. The movie tries hard – perhaps too hard - to make her seem like the previous character but fails miserably at it. And all we get is a cheap counterfeit. Perhaps I’m being biased. I like Rachel – I think she’s really attractive but yet funny in the first 2 movies - plus she's got a cute British accent to boot.
Perhaps the Director knew that he had a unbelievably weak storyline, so he tries desperately to compensate by having ridiculously over-the-top CGI chase scenes in Shanghai, and nice-but-still-obviously artificial backdrops for rest of the movie. This is such a far cry from the infinitely more realistic settings of the first 2.
And since the story is set in China, we predictably get the characters attempting to sprout some weak-ass, laughable, poorly-pronounced Mandarin lines. It was so bad that (1) I starting laughing when I heard it. (2) I couldn’t understand the rest of what was said if not for the English subtitles.
I mean, come on people! If you want to do it, then do it correctly
lah. Either you get them trained to pronounce properly or just stick to plain old English. The story simply can’t work if you have ‘ang mo’ characters sprouting blah-blah mandarin and a 2000 year old Chinese ‘witch’, who lived in a cave, suddenly speaking almost perfect English.
There are so many things wrong with the movie that it’s just simply very, very disappointing.
I was still entertained to a certain extend by the numerous, and probably unintended, comic moments but I had such high expectations from the first 2 movies that I found this round to be such a huge disappointment. If they do make a fourth movie, I’ll be thinking really hard if I want to spend my time and money just to be let down yet again.
Heng ah.. that I watched this on a Wednesday and paid only $7.50. I'd probably be feeling really cheated if I had watched on a Saturday night.
