Entertaining, but very, very messy.

Rating: 4/10 (31 July 2008)

If you're thrilled by amusing one liners and nonstop special effects of all kinds of weird creatures, then you're sure to enjoy this second Mummy picture. If not, you will probably turn it off after a few minutes. The first Mummy picture was quite good, in that it managed to fit in characters and plot amongst the big budget special effects. The first picture showed that Universal movie monsters could easily be remade into big budget, special effect extravaganzas, and still be good. Everything I liked about the first movie (minus the characters) was overdone to the extreme here, and about halfway through or earlier, I found myself loathing this picture. The overall feeling though was not one of hatred...this is just an overplotted mess, with moderate entertainment value throughout.
Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) is back, nine years after the first movie (I thought it was two, but whatever), and he and Evelyn (Racchel Weisz) are married and have an 8 year old kid, Alex (Freddie Boath). Imhotep's (Arnold Vosloo) mummy has been brought back to life, and he wants the bracelet of immortality, which is now in the hands of Rick and company. The bracelet controls the Scorpion King's (played in a pointless cameo by the Rock) army, which consists of easy to defeat dogs who with one hit turn to sand. Chaos ensues throughout.
If you aren't paying attention in this movie, or you miss the first ten minutes, you will be extremely confused. Heck, you could be paying attention the whole movie and still be confused. So much is going on, and so many special effects and new plot lines are shoved in your face way too often. Special effects on the mummies and creatures are pretty cool, but the bigger effects are just a huge headache, and they look very artificial. The plot is virtually nonexistent. I guess there are several plot lines, but in between them are many sidetracked scenes, and by the end, this just feels like a bunch of random scenes shoved together.
This movie is full of cutesy moments. I'm unsure as to why a mummy movie needs any cutesy moments, but since this is meant for families, writer and director Stephen Sommers made this both violent and cutesy and comedic, so it never fully works as anything (though it does work much better as an action movie than anything else). Jonathan (John Hannah) provides many of the movies cringe worthy lines. He's one of those characters that is scared to death from anything and everything, and still quips out the bad jokes. Brendan Fraser does the same, but he has a charm he brings to the character, and is one of the few positives of the movie. The kid Alex was a good addition, and for some reason, he felt more mature and developed than most other parts of the movie.
Overall, this is a pretty bad movie. It's full of effects that add up to nothing, and characters that do the same. There is some entertainment to be found, but you may find after you finish this, you'll be in desperate need for something intelligent.
My rating: * 1/2 out of ****. 125 mins. PG-13 for violence.