The Mummy ALWAYS returns

Rating: 8/10 (22 May 2001)

No matter what you do to those pesky creatures, there will always be a
lost book or amulet somewhere with the recipe to bring them back. A
sequel is a certain thing, and The Mummy 3 is just a question of time.
And we can also be sure that the graphics effects will be, if not
better, at least more grandiose.
The computer graphics were the biggest disappointment for me. They
were well planned, but there is still something lacking in the
software to make them look real. The scorpion king was the worst part
of it, but all the computer generated scenes stand out as artificial
looking. Let's just hope the next couple of years bring enough
technical development to make the next sequel perfect.
The plot, well, what kind of plot do you expect from a film called
"The Mummy Returns"? It may not have been written by Shakespeare, but
the story carries well and there is the right amount of tension and
comic relief. Two very lovely ladies. The only thing that bothered me
was a certain abundance of characters. One feels they could have
combined the kid, the brother in law, and the balloon pilot into one.
The dispute between the women, reaching back a few millennia, is as
important as the dispute between the male characters. I kept trying to
grasp which was the "main" plot line without success. The museum
curator has a small part in the beginning, but hovers around appearing
briefly several times. If I had written the story, I would have that
obnoxious person meet a particularly gruesome end once Imhotep had
been resuscitated. Perhaps the idea in the story alternating equally
between so many people was to bring the main focus to the special
effects.
I see a definitive improvement in this kind of film over the
"classics" of the 1930's. In those days, horror films were dead
serious. It was as if they were telling the spectators "hey folks,
never mind the lousy special effects, this thing is for real".
Nowadays, they say "it's just a movie, sit back and enjoy the show".
I give it a 8/10 and can't wait for "The Mummy Returns Again".