From a big a fan of the original, with minor spoilers

Rating: Null/10 (3 May 2001)

As with all sequels to Films you love, your expectations have to be kept low, so the disappointment is equally low or the elation is extremely high. And I loved the first one. Not since Raiders has there been a film that is as exciting, romantic and as action packed as The Mummy. So the sequel? Well it wasn't disappointing, which is good, but it wasn't the equal of its forerunner either. I just didn't leave the cinema with the same skip in my step and big grin on my face. All the ingredients were there, with some superb action sequences - topped by the Pygmy sequence - but it just didn't mix. It wasn't Alex, the son, once you got used to him you realised he had some of the best lines and it wasn't The Rock (thankfully his appearance is very short lived). It was just a lot of action and fighting sequences strung together by an overfilled and often incomprehensible plot - it's called Mummy Returns, which he did, but from there on had little to do. It seemed to forget that the last film mocked the cheesiness of old cliffhangers and just became cheesy itself, with some awful clangers in the script which should have been delivered with tongue firmly in cheek. In it's credit, the stars were still hugely likeable, Brendan Fraser clearly carrying the Indiana Jones' (metaphorical) hat into the new millennium, and the set pieces looked spectacular. I think it needs a second viewing as a lot of the one liners were lost under the sound effects and I'll still going to buy the inevitable Collector's Edition DVD (with behind the scenes and meet the stars), but tonight I'll be sitting down in front of the original and reminding myself of how it could have been