Most of the reviews of The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor said it was rubbish but gave it more than one star. Why is this? Clearly because this mummy movie does their work for them. The review takes about two minutes to write – as I will demonstrate using the points below that all of the reviews have mentioned.
-It’s a threequel. Threequels are nearly always rubbish, especially when the first sequel was rubbish, which was certainly the case with The Mummy Returns. Therefore the critic can use phrases like “Uncalled for second sequel” and “Law of diminishing returns”, and if they are really keen bemoan the state of Hollywood for making unwanted sequels.
-It is at best a thematic sequel with all the same characters getting messed up with a completely different undead scenario. It convenient drops some of the more complex mythology of the second film, in particular that Evie O’Connell is the reincarnation of Nefertiti. This allows critics to again bemoan the point that it is a cobbled together sequel to try and recapture the (barely existent magic) of the original. Which unfortunately leads to…
-The recasting of Evie O’Connell from Rachel Weisz to Maria Bello. Not only does this allow the critic to bash the film AGAIN for clearly not being up to Weisz’s high standard, they can diss the chemistry between Brendan Fraser and Bello. Even better for critics Bello looks significantly different to Weisz. And to cap it all, Bello is an American so critics can slag off her British accent. And extra, extra Bello usually turns up in arthouse movies so critics can say she is slumming it (and equally she can do interviews saying that she loves action movies). They can also waste a few lines saying how nice Rachel Weisz is.
-Oh, talking of Rachel Weisz, the apocryphal story goes that she did not want to do the film because she would be playing the mother of a 20-year old child. This is a decent segue into the issue of the twenty year old child being rubbish. The ten year old child in The Mummy Returns was rubbish. They retained the rubbish bit, hence more rubbish. Easy paragraph there especially when you consider that…
-The Mummy leant strongly on Indiana Jones. We had an Indiana Jones sequel this year where the hero turned out to have a son. Critic can happily bemoan that there are no original ideas left in Hollywood, perhaps wonder where this paternal desire of heroes are coming from (think Bush Snr and Bush Jnr if you want to stretch your political metaphor).
-Speaking of political metaphors, the film is set in China. Not only are the Olympics in China, but there is a great opportunity for film reviewers to make some half arsed political commentary about China’s political and economic strength as reflected in a film about an army of terracotta warriors coming to life.
-Oh, that means you can talk about terracotta warriors, and the inappropriateness of using this real life art as essentially the undead, unstoppable bad guys in this
movie, thus divorcing the art from reality in the same way the EVIL CHINESE EMPEROR is divorced from any real historical character.
-And voila, you’ve got to the end of the review without even mentioning throwing away Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, irrevelvance of John Hannah, Tibet, Shangri-la…
-Though you probably have to mention the American football playing Yeti’s (everyone does).
There you have a review of the Mummy sequel. Not only that but you can spend all your paragraphs slagging it off and still give it two stars out of five because it shows gusto, or was fun, or all the things that your not really supposed to put in a review. God forbid you enjoyed this tripe.