Lost Magic

Rating: Null/10 (19 November 2001)

I awaited the sequel to the smash hit The Mummy with great anticipation. I thought the first movie was action-packed and possessed a great deal of charisma. It was one of the films that I found hard not to like. What happened in the sequel? Where was that same magic? Gone. I sat through this film of contrived plot sequences, almost non-existent character development, and machine gun special effects and wished it would end soon. Literally, I could not wait till the ending. The film was nothing but one special effect after another. It had no real plot. But worst of all, it lacked likable characters that populated the first film and gave it its charm. Brandon Fraser was still here, but he just seemed too rushed to be funny. The effects were crowding his comic style. Rachel Weisz, who had an undeniable likability in the first film because of her awkwardness and shy demeanor, is transformed into a supermodel-archaeologist. She looks like she just got out of a hair salon as she journeys through the Egyptian desert. The background story is weak, and obviously an excuse to bring back characters from the first film(too bad they could not bring back Bernard Fox or Kevin O'Connor from the first film!). Director Stephen Sommers really plays and panders to a far-less intelligent crowd in this one. And that's too bad. Instead of building on to something interesting and unique, he creates one cliche of a film with everything from the little boy who is smarter than his parents to the resorting to two scantily clad females in a cat-fight like sequence. A big disappointment!