Product: The Mummy Returns [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 3.0
Not as good as the first, but still quite enjoyable.
The Mummy Returns was not as good as I my friends said, but not as bad as the reviwers said. All of the cast is back, in another wild adventure that tops the first in computer effects, but not in anything else.A good story, though not as good as the first, Great visuals and scenery, and some great battle scenes. The best sequence in the film was the bus scene, where Soldier Mummies attack our heros while the try to escape on a double-decker bus. The army of Anubis was awesome, but short-changed. Anubis is another egyptian idol who is not an evil god, as was portrayed in the film, but the god of mummification. They kept the jackal-head look and gave them weapons. Rick got to slug it out with Imhotep while he was mortal, which was neat. The Scorpion King, however, was not a very good character. He was portrayed as a centaur-type scorpion with the Rock's face. Rather then a frightening character, you are tempted to laugh out loud when you first see him. (But of course, that wouldn't be proper.) He is obviously computer-generated, with the Rock's face scanned into the computers and used.The worst thing about this movie was a shortage of its namesake. Imhotep, the all powerful mummy. He was not given enough screen time. In the first movie, All of the men responsible for opening the chest that held the book of the dead were killed by the mummy, who stole their skin and regenerated himself in a gradual proscess. In this film it is in one brief scene. Rather dissapointing to me. I think he looks much cooler in his decomposed state. There was a shortage of other mummies as well. In the first movie, there was a huge battle at the end with hundreds of mummies. The only mummies we see in this are five at the beginning, who are finished in ten minutes, and then an encounter with little pygmy mummies near the end. And that brings me to another point. What in the heck were those pygmy things? They were described as mummies, but why would they mummify strange shrunken creatures who live in a cursed oasis? And even if they did, why and how were they brought back to life? Totally unexplained. People looking for the same laughs they got in the first will be dissapointed, because this one doesn't come close. It is funny, but I could tell that they didn't even try to be as funny as the first. The first one got most of its laughs from the arguments between Rick and his ex-partner, Benny. As you probably remember, Benny suffered a horrible off-screen death by scarab beetles. So that makes it rather impossible to bring him back.Overall, a very cool action movie that fans of the original will enjoy, but in my humble opinion, the first was better.