The Mummy does indeed return: displeasingly; in what is, frankly, a sequel at the lower end of what is moderately acceptable.

Rating: 5/10 (14 May 2011)

I rather liked the first Mummy film, I rather liked its knowing attitude towards its rip-roaring and somewhat guilty content; I liked the way it had its characters just walk off into the desert sunset when everything had been said and done. The film's overall framework was satisfyingly closed, evil had been defeated and its undercurrent of romance that the lead and the leading female shared had been introduced as disparate at best; developed and then rounded off in a pleasing manner – if we'd never again seen Rick or Evy or Jonathan, despite how fond of them we'd become by the time The Mummy ended, we'd have been happy. Steven Sommers' 2001 sequel, entitled The Mummy Returns, does precisely what it says on its proverbial tin; the dragging of some of these people back into a firing line of stunts and special effects complete with a few new faces, most of them as unwelcome as the arriving of the film is as a whole and most of the content this time tired and dreary.
As with the first, the film begins with a somewhat out of place back-story full of gory and grotesque minor details more broadly linked to a seedier bigger picture around which decrepit acts are unfolding. In the first, two people had an illicit affair which lead to tongues being removed from the mouths of those guilty, and for those whom got off lightly, live mummification; a process one ought to point out is wholly impossible for a duration of longer than about half a second. Here, we observe a great warrior and king in Dwayne Johnson's character, without provocation, gobble down a live scorpion after his power mad but ultimately failed attempts at the conquest of varying kingdoms go array. The reasoning for the arthropodic snack lies in the pact he makes with a war God - the wolfing down of a live scorpion its activation and the first of many instances in which characters do crazy, off-the-cusp things purely to lead us onto greater extents of spectacle driven content. The results allow the now infamous Scorpion King to sweep across most of his land, killing all in his way but arriving with the catch that he won't really be in much of a position to enjoy any of it since his soul is swiped and he is doomed exist cursed. Indeed, the conquest carries with it an air of pointlessness; I guess people were just more aggressive and power hungry way-back-when.
Centuries later, in 1933, the O'Connell's, in Fraser 's Rick and Weisz's Evelyn, are back; here complete with a new face in the form of son Alex (Boath) as well as John Hannah's Jonathan who's actually the funniest thing in the film. How we can tell Alex keeps it in the family is in his activation of a number of pillars toppling into one another alá his mother's pratfalls in the library in which she worked during the first. Where they are is an isolated tomb somewhere, the family's introduction as a working unit seeing them intermingle and combine in an array of goofy ways to eventually get whatever job or quest they were initially there for complete. The opening, in its cave chock full of floors of creepy-crawlies is very post-Temple of Doom; the removing of a statuette causing the whole temple to cave in rather sub-Raiders of the Lost Ark. You'd have to be a very stupid person to go into these films not knowing that they owe a great debt to Spielberg's then-trilogy of Jones movies, but this just takes the cake.
Evil forces, however, lurk; the bringing about of the High Priest Imhotep (Vosloo), he of the first movie, out of his slumber by a cult its revealed is way out of its own comfort zone kicking off all manner of nastiness – the ultimate goal to resurrect the Scorpion King and steal his armies and power so as to rule over all for once and for all. The film itself is peppered with an array of instances and happenings which do not makes sense, the bulk of it special effects driven masking wafer thin plotting; the troupe of heroes' eventual enlisting of the help of a black hot air balloon pilot a sort of replacement for the firsts' Benni so as to induce a love/hate buddy relationship with Rick just disappointing. On other occasions, the film will branch out into another back story in which that of Evy is involved; her premonitions of being present during ancient Egyptian times and in the company of Imhotep and co. handy for plot conveniences but arrives with the fact the man himself was in her presence and yet has never recognised her – to be fair, I suppose he's had a lot on his mind in the intermingling thousand years. Things lead onto other things; the encountering of some four foot high monsters nearer Johnson's domain puzzling in that they appear deterrents, but why wouldn't The Scorpion King want to be awoken?
The Mummy Returns retains the familiarity of the first but lacks the fun, as if Sommers is trying to 'top' material which was never there to be done in any other manner than knowing and self-aware. It is epitomised by the instances of Rick's casual jabs at generic code and convention, which worked with the 1999 first film, but here, is delivered in a flat and disparaging fashion. Sommers is sticking true to what his returning character might say, even though it counteracts with what it is he actually thinks of the material, ie; as something that can be played for something other than smiles and smirks. Flimsey, loose and not nearly as involving nor as fun as the first; Sommers drops the ball with The Mummy Returns, a film which removes the pleasures of the first and mishandles the contexture to produce an effort high on goofiness more than anything.