A fast-paced, inventive adventure

Rating: 7/10 (24 October 2004)

Mummy Returns takes the characters and story from the first film and develops on them in a big, big way. The situations and set-pieces are wilder, the odds even bigger and character arcs more complex.
Set 10 years after the first movie Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz have made a rich living out of plundering tombs and pyramids. Who could have predicted that their old nemesis I'm-Ho-Tep would return faster and stronger than before.
But I'm still having trouble seeing I'm-Ho-Tep as a villain. Surely it's the scheming, lying, conspiring supplicants that are the real villains. The look in his eyes at the end, when his lover betrays him, is heartbreaking. I can't root for him as a bad guy when he never really does anything bad. Sure he wants to rule the world and all but who doesn't?
The effects are not the best (Star Wars Episode 2 used up all the space at ILM at the time) but there are loads of them and they're all lavish and imaginative. I HATE movies that are carried by SFX but Mummy Returns incorporates them into the story in a seamless way. How cool is the big balloon? Or the approach of Anubis' army?
Most directors screw-up big budget, big scale movies (AVP, King Arthur, Sky Captain, Exorcist Prequel, Catwoman) but Stephen Sommers knows where the heart of this kind of movie is and delivers, once again, a cheeky adventure with loads and loads of action and enough story and character to back it up. Filmed in Panavision the 2.35:1 anamorphic picture is perfect and the Dolby/DTS 5.1 is very loud and thundering. A very good soundtrack indeed. The extras are total fluff and not worth the time.