Migraine inducing

Rating: 4/10 (7 May 2001)

The Mummy, released in 1999, was a surprisingly enjoyable movie. A spoof of the old movie serials, it took the old classic and actually did something new and different with it. While no masterpiece, it had wit, fun character portrayals, and took its liesurly time in telling its story, using great special effects judiciously. It was really a movie to make you smile, yet ahead its share of "horror" and gross outs.
The Mummy Returns has little of any of this, and what it does have is completely buried in the relentless barrage of special effects and earsplitting noise. Never did I imagine they could a movie more loud and obnoxious than Armegeddon or The Matrix, but they have succeeded in doing so. The visuals are often stunning, but there is too much, and too little of everything else. For all the action, this movie is very boring. There is a story, but its hard to even pay attention to it with all the sensory overload. Brendon Fraser himself pretty much drowns in the mess, and the Mummy himself, central and rather charming in the original, is a mere decoration here. And of course they add a kid to propel the story. The best I can say is he is not as obnoxious as most movie kids.
Of course, since louder, brasher and faster seems to by synomomous with quality, audiences will love it. What really mystifies me is how some critics, who are supposedly sophisticated and knowledgeable about movies, can consider this superior to the original, or even more inexplicable, the critics who don't see the difference between the two, either liking both or not liking both.
As for the criticism, "Hey its just a fun movie - not Shakespeare" - well The Mummy wasn't Shakespeare either, it was mindless but fun. This was mindless and unpleasant. This is nothing but a vehicle to see what could be done with the mouse clicker.
BIG THUMBS DOWN.