Too many problems to count

Rating: 2/10 (4 May 2001)

I had so many problems with this movie, I don't know where to begin. Let me say that I am a fan of The Mummy (1999)... it's definitely a guilty pleasure. That movie had a good plot, a good build up to the "reveal" of the mummy, hilarious one liners ("It's still... juicy"), and fun action sequences.
The Mummy Returns doesn't have any of that. We see the first supernatural beings about thirty seconds into the movie (the sand-doggies), and the first mummies about two minutes later. And they're the same soldier mummies from the first movie. Sigh.
The action is so relentless that it gets boring, and rarely leaves time for any dialog at all, let alone anything funny. The plot is rather painfully contrived, and not much is explained. The romance between Evie and O'Connell is just plain sappy ("Cue violins... now kiss!" got old after the 4th or 5th time, thanks), and loses the spark their relationship had in the first movie.
And you know, I could suspend my disbelief about the whole supernatural ancient egyptian magic thing; after all, it's rather essential to the central theme of the movie. I *refused* to suspend my disbelief about the hot air balloon with after burners. That was just plain stupid.
Don't get me started on the horridly inconsistent CGI work. It was VERY bad at times, to the point of it looking like a video game. The Rock as the scorpion king (at the end) looked so jarringly fake that I wanted to run far away from this film. They must have just painted The Rock's face onto a CGI model, and it showed. Mr. Potato Head from Toy Story had more emotion in his facial expressions.
Oh well, this movie will make its millions. But it doesn't deserve it.
-John