Stephen Sommers isn't Steven Spielberg, but at least he isn't Jan deBont.

Rating: 7/10 (5 July 2002)

Jan deBont started out great, directing-wise, with "Speed," and he hasn't made a decent movie since. Stephen Sommers hasn't reached the heights of "Speed," but he hasn't plumbed the depths of "Speed 2: Cruise Control" either - he makes big dumb movies, for sure, but at least he makes entertaining big dumb movies. Think of him as the American equivalent of Roland Emmerich if Emmerich hadn't shot his bolt after "Independence Day" ("Deep Rising" is everything "Godzilla" should have been).
"The Mummy Returns," the silly but fun sequel to the silly but fun "The Mummy," actually improves on the original in a few aspects, most notably in that Rachel Weisz's Evy has a bit more dimension to her this time with the clumsiness that was a running gag in the first movie passed on as an afterthought to her and Rick's (Brendan Fraser) son; but the story of our heroes having to prevent the unearthed Mummy and his reincarnated love (the fetching Patricia Valezquez) from killing the Scorpion King and using his army to take over the world, all the while racing to keep their son from dying himself, is more than a little flawed in its scripting - where did the new Anck-su-Namun come from, for instance? - and some moments leave a bad taste in the mouth (are we really supposed to laugh at the scene where a hapless underling gets killed by a pygmy and John Hannah's character says "Sorry!"?).
Our heroes' son (played by Spencer Treat Clark, who I honestly thought was a girl in "Gladiator" and didn't impress me here either) is another drawback, with attempts to weld his mother's Britishness and his father's wiseacre nature never quite working; and the special effects are uneven, varying from horribly obvious (like the opening battle and the raising of the dead army in the climax) to quite good (like the pygmies and the abyss) - since five effects companies are listed, it's unlikely that Industrial Light and Magic are to blame for all the flaws (and they are definitely credited for the pygmy work).
But the movie benefits from action to spare, from its spirited cast (even the Rock in his - let's be honest - cameo as the Scorpion King), and also from Alan Silvestri's excellent score. (A big order of the carnivorous bugs that eat at least one member of the cast should, however, go to whoever put that ghastly song "Forever May Not Be Long Enough" over the end credits - the most obvious tack-on pop number since Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting got together for the tune at the end of the '93 version of "The Three Musketeers.") Mentally stimulating it's not, but it's not boring by any stretch of the imagination. And when will you ever see another film with a credit for "Mountain Of Flesh"?