Bad beyond believe

Rating: 2/10 (14 March 2004)

"The Mummy" was nice and fun to watch, with the stress on "fun" in that the movie didn't take itself seriously at all, and had tendencies of being an action parody. I expected "The Mummy" to be a dumb action flick, and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't one. Now, knowing its prequel, I expected "The Mummy Returns" to be about as entertainingly funny. Well, I couldn't have been disappointed more. "The Mummy Returns" is just dumb. I mean, really dumb. Non-original, non-funny, non-entertainingly dumb. No traces left of the "action parody" approach, no traces worth mentioning of a plot, badly written and directed, really bad and most of all noticable CGI at times (while -strangely enough- being rather good at other times). It even fails on a design level in that the ancient egyptian look is totally unrealistic and over-the-top, all in all appearing rather un-egyptian ("The Mummy" was halfway decent in this regard). "The Mummy Returns" tries to be a fully-fledged action flick, but even fails at that. The fighting sequences are lame and badly paced, the effects are silly and misplaced and barely state-of-the-art, even the sound design is awful as it often relies on known audio library effects that one knows just too well. "The Mummy" had a proper and fairly convincing feel in terms of showing 1920s people messing with ancient egyptian ghosts. Watching "The Mummy Returns" feels wrong throughout its entire length, it appears like 21st century people putting on a bad provincial stageplay or carnival show without really knowing what they're doing or how to do it. If movies are compositions, this one is incredibly badly composed. Don't waste your time or money unless you're expecting nothing, especially not a proper sequel.