director/screenwriter
Stephen
Sommers
producers
Sean Daniel
James Jacks
cinematographer
Adrian Biddle
music
Alan Silvestri
editors
Bob Ducsay
Kelly Matsumoto
cast
Brendan Fraser (Rick O'Connell)
Rachel Weisz (Evelyn O'Connell)
John Hannah (Jonathan)
Freddie Boath (Alex)
Arnold Vosloo (Lord Imhotep)
Oded Fehr (Ardeth Bay)
Patricia Velasquez (Anck-Su-Namun)
The Rock (The Scorpion King)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 130m
u.s.
release: May 4, 2001
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other stephen
sommers films
reviewed on this website:
- the
mummy
- van
helsing
See also:
- The
Scorpion King
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An entire generation of kids
are growing up on the new Mummy films, just as I grew
up on the Indiana Jones films, and perhaps in 20 years,
today's kids will look back as fondly and geekily at The Mummy
as we thirtysomethings (cough, wheeze) reminisce about Raiders
of the Lost Ark. Thank God the new series actually
earns its place at the adventure table. 1999's The
Mummy and its new sequel, The Mummy Returns, are
unapologetic wedges of pop cheese -- packed to the rafters with
thrills, spills, explosions, monsters, and above all, humor.
These movies not only laugh at themselves, they crack themselves
up.
The sequel unfolds in 1933,
eight years after the original; in that time, stalwart adventurer
Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and plucky researcher Evelyn
(Rachel Weisz) have married and had a son, Alex (Freddie Boathe).
By my calculations, that means Rick and Evelyn must have conceived
Alex five minutes after the first movie's fade-out, and the movie
likewise wastes little time. In a prologue, we meet the Scorpion
King (played, in not much of an acting stretch, by the popular
WWF wrestler The Rock), an ancient warrior who ... um ... does
something to displease the gods, or something to please them,
or something (I never give the plots of these movies the time
of day), and centuries later he is due to rise again and conquer
the world with his Army of Anubis, or something.
As per the movie's title, though,
Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) is brought back to life, with the help
of the reincarnation of his lost love Anck-Su-Namun (Patricia
Velasquez), to do battle with the Scorpion King. So ... that
makes Imhotep a good guy, right? Well, not really, since his
minions are prepared to kill, not to mention kidnap Evelyn and/or
Alex, to achieve their goal. So it's up to Rick, Evelyn, her
craven brother Jonathan (John Hannah), and returning desert warrior
Ardath Bay (Oded Fehr) -- all of whom, one hopes, enjoyed their
eight years of relaxation -- to stop Imhotep, Anck-Su-Namun,
the Scorpion King, and anyone else who remotely resembles a reincarnation
of ancient gods, plants, or minerals.
Stephen Sommers has written
and directed both films as if he were a precocious boy bashing
action figures together when he isn't gobbling down neat-o myths
and legends of Egypt; if he wants to go for a third outing with
Rick, Evelyn, and God knows what other metaphysical beasts, he
may have a trilogy to rival the other Steve's. Sommers definitely
has a lead worthy of Harrison Ford in his prime; Brendan Fraser
brings intelligence, sarcasm, and a sense of play to his athletics,
and Rachel Weisz -- so neurasthenic in the recent Enemy
at the Gates that she may as well have been Helena Bonham
Carter -- is pink-cheeked and active again, with the mane of
a lioness and the maternal instincts (and fighting instincts)
to match.
Will fans of old-school adventures
-- going back even further than Raiders, to the 1930s
serials that inspired everything else in the genre -- feel a
tiny pang of loss at this high-tech party? Possibly. In one or
two sequences, Sommers goes in for the smash-and-grab editing
and herky-jerky action of Gladiator,
and quite often the computerized beasts are as flatly unreal
as the now-quaint-looking latex and light shows of the Indy
series. But Sommers also stages several peerless bits: a chase
aboard a double-decker bus pursued by Imhotep's fearsome guards;
a run-in with vicious pygmy mummies gleefully ripped off from
Jurassic
Park and Gremlins; the final three-way throwdown
between Rick, Imhotep, and the Scorpion King (whose unconvincing
digitally-mapped facial features are clunky enough to reassure
us that Hollywood can't do away with actors just yet).
The whole two-hours-plus affair
just soars along, brainlessly and breathlessly, just like in
the ancient days of 1981. The Mummy films come along just
in time to save kids from growing up with nothing but Pokemon
and George Lucas' joyless reprise of his Star Wars tax
write-off. For that alone, they have my gratitude. For returning
me to the wide-eyed age of eleven for a handful of hours, they
have my affection.
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