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Cinema review
Directed by Rob Cohen
Starring Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello, Jet Li, John Hannah, Michelle Yeoh, Luke Ford
Release date 6 August 2008 (UK)
When the merciless Emperor of Qin (Li) and his army of warriors are resurrected after 2000 years, it’s up to Rick (Fraser), Evelyn (Bello) and their son Alex (Ford) to put an end to his power-crazed ambitions…
If your favourite movies happen to include The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King, then you may have found a new addition for your Top 5. For anyone who likes their blockbusters to come with just a smidgen of wit and imagination, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is likely to make for a vaguely depressing experience.
Of course, it was always going to be difficult for any summer movie to make an impact in the wake of the boundary-pushing The Dark Knight; but it’s not really fair to compare the two. The Mummy films never had any claim to being anything other than knockabout B-movies with a budget and, as such, there is at least something refreshingly unpretentious about Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. But, god, this is crushingly dull stuff.
With the departure of journeyman director Stephen Sommers, the Mummy reins have been passed on to journeyman director Rob Cohen (a man unhealthily obsessed with making movies with ‘Dragon’ in the title – his credits also include Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and Dragonheart). Inevitably there isn’t a massive shift in style, aside from a few fashionably wobbly camera movements. Cohen's movie jaunts along from one very loud but plodding set piece to another (some kung-fu here, some incongruous yetis there), and as with the previous Mummy movies the CGI is extremely variable (the army of resurrected skeletons is fairly impressive; the three-headed dragon is not).
Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello (replacing Rachel Weitz) and Luke Ford go at all this with some gusto, but, when it isn’t inaudible, the dialogue is often horribly sentimental. Few films can get pull off big scenes of family hugs without it sticking in the craw, and The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is not the exception to the rule.
The presence of Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh might be a draw for martial arts fans, but the duo barely get to do any fighting or, in fact, anything interesting. But at least they’re inoffensive, which is more than you can say about a mugging John Hannah. Returning as Evy’s brother-in-law, Hannah is once again the worst thing about the movie, providing cruelly unfunny comic relief that at no time threatens to raise a smile.
The Mummy movies were always a poor man’s Indiana Jones, but in a year in which we’ve already had a poor man’s Indiana Jones (it was called Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), Tomb of the Dragon Emperor feels especially redundant. Of course, this never had the expectations of Indy 4, so it can hardly be called a letdown, but even by the standards of the previous adventures this is hack filmmaking at its most humdrum. Matt McAllister
VERDICT: 3/10
The dumbest Mummy outing to date.
