So Unoriginal, It Borders On Kleptomania

Rating: 4/10 (4 May 2001)

`The Mummy Returns" suffers from heavy-handed thievery. It's probably a terrific movie if you've never seen any other movies before in your life, or if you've been living in a cave for the past twenty-five years, but if you don't meet the above criteria, then you're in for a bland, shameless rehash of a dozen other action movies that are better than `The Mummy Returns'. Combine this with a rather dull story and shoddy CGI effects, and you've got the first forgettable, must-miss blockbuster of 2001.
Ten years after the events of `The Mummy' ended (`The Mummy', incidentally, was a fun, much superior film to this dreck), we find erstwhile adventurer Rick O'Connell (Brendan Frasier) married to his tempestuous love Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), living in London and leading relatively normal lives. (The fact that such characters could ever contemplate living normal lives is possibly the only original part of the film.) However, fate and a heavy-handed script conspire to bring the body of the Mummy Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) to the British Museum. Once again, the Mummy Imhotep awakens, determined to live again and bring about the destruction of the world. Only Rick, Evelyn, and their 9-year old son Alex (Freddie Boath) can defeat the Mummy and save the world for impending doom. Blah, blah, blah.
`The Mummy Returns' is wall-to-wall action, but that's probably due to necessity, since the movie doesn't have anything to say. Action can be fun in its own right, but great action usually at least has a semblance of a story as its backbone, and `The Mummy Returns' usually has nothing. When it does have something to say, it's cribbed straight out of `Indiana Jones'. Or `Romancing the Stone'. Or occasionally, when it's feeling ambitious, it stretches back to steal from Errol Flynn classics such as `Captain Blood'. There's no new twists in `The Mummy Returns', nothing that hasn't already been seen in a hundred other actions movies before . . . and definitely nothing that hasn't already been seen in its infinitely better predecessor, `The Mummy'. Yes, some of the fight scenes are spectacular  a flashback fight between Evelyn and the Egyptian princess Anck-Su-Namun (Patricia Velasquez) is particularly outstanding  and the action makes for some over-the-top fun; but after awhile, it's simply gratuitous, mildly exciting filler. (And the CGI work is uneven  while it's probably fun for the programmers to dream this cutting-edge stuff up, it still looks jarringly fake.) It's fun, even dumb fun, but dumb fun has been done in other films, and in much better films than `The Mummy Returns'.
Performances: Brendan Frasier is pretty good, but his character Rick is more or less a mechanism for delivering quips and punchlines, nothing more. Rachel Weisz, whose character is much stronger than she was in the first `Mummy' film, is actually quite good  she blends the cliched damsel-in-distress role with a certain amount of feistiness and sarcasm that makes her very, very appealing. Arnold Vosloo is wasted yet again as the Mummy  all the guy does is sneer and flex his muscles. The Mummy's not scary, he's boring cardboard.
`The Mummy Returns' isn't nearly as good as `The Mummy'. Then again, it's not nearly good, period. Possibly worth watching if in you're in a mood for idiotic fun, but even then, you can do much better than this needless waste of film. Grade: C-