In a word: decent. It's entertaining. Bad, but entertaining.

Rating: 5/10 (11 May 2001)

I hate people who don't like movies that have one goal: to entertain. Some movies aren't made to be awe inspiring. Some movies aren't made to be classics. Some movies are made for the simple purpose of being fun. The Mummy was one of these. It was a fun, funny, and cool movie. Anyone who didn't like 1999's The Mummy is not human. Now we have the sequel. It is entertaining, but no where near as good as the original.
Seeing this movie made me appreciate the first movie. The first Mummy was an adventure movie, through and through. In the tradition of Indiana Jones, the movie took us to another world, made us laugh, built suspense, and was really cool. The sequel is nothing like this. In the first movie, we don't see the mummy Ie-Moh-Tep until almost an hour into the movie. It used the "Jaws" technique of not showing the monster until the audience becomes annoyed at its absense. The Mummy Returns goes ahead and shows us the Mummy in its first 30 minutes. Is this bad? Not really. Its just different.
Next, the major difference between the two movies is the pace. The Mummy was relaxed, not moving slow, but not overdoing itself. It kept running at a brisk pace. Now The Mummy Returns is fast. Very fast. Jet speed fast. The movie does not waist time in character development (because they did that in the first movie and if you're seeing this movie you've seen the original). The Mummy 2 runs from one action scene to another. I found that after the first hour I was getting real tired of it. Too much of a good thing, after all.
The movie's biggest problem is the thing the first movie did so well: its special effects. The Mummy Returns has some of the poorest excuses for CGI special effects I have ever seen. Okay, maybe not. But this is ILM folks. The people who invented modern day movie special effects starting with the fisrt Star Wars movies and moving on to Terminator 2, to Jurassic Park, and the upcoming Pearl Harbor. These guys are the best in the business. So why are the effects so bad? Because ILM's schedule is packed, and something had to be cut. Think about it. ILM is doing Jurassic Park 3, Pearl Harbor, A.I., Star Wars Episode II, Planet of the Apes, The Mummy Returns, and other movies all at the same time. Some movie had to get shafted. Well, this is it. Some of the effects in this movie are great. Any effect involving a face in some thing like a wall of water of smoke (like the wall of sand in the original) is great. The ending battle scene is done good. Some other scenes are great. But there are plenty of other BAD special effects shots to make up for it. Overall the movie just looks fake and this impacts the overall effect the film has. Movies like this need to be fun and somewhat believable. If the effects suck, well, so does the movie.
I have one last major gripe. I can beleive that people can be brought back from the dead. Yea, I can. It's part of the movie. It's the whole point of the movie. If you can't suspend that belief than just stop reading this and go rent Gone With the Wind. But I cannot suspend the belief that a hot air balloon has after-burners. There is this scene where the movie's main vehical, a hot air balloon, is being chased by the wall of water with Ie-moh-tep's face (a-la the Mummy 1). Well, to escape, the pilot (if you can call a guy who flies a hot air balloon a pilot) hits a button and, vu-al-la, these rockets egnite and the ballon escapes in a burst of speed. The rockets are the main propulsion device on this balloon, that belief I can suspend for the sake of entertainment. But AFTERBURNERS!? HAHAHAH! That's laughable!
In conclusion: This is an entertaining movie, but a bad movie. the plot is very, very, very, very, very weak. The characters and the actors are pretty weak. Even the damn special effects are weak. But, hey, it is kindof fun. Go see it with the kids, they'll get a kick out of it. But trust me, this is a movie you see once, talk about once, then forget.
Rating: 5/10