Product: The Mummy Returns [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 4.0
My Mummy Done Told Me
The Mummy Returns (Widescreen Collector's Edition)This one is worth seeing. The characters are enjoyable (both the good and the bad guys) and Patricia Velasquez finally gets to do some serious acting. I'm not going to give away anything but let's just say if you're hoping for a chickfight between her and Rachel Weisz you probably won't be disappointed.A lot of reviewers were negative on this film and I can understand they felt let down a bit. They'd already been stunned by the computer generated special effects in the first film and you won't see anything new in that way in this film (variations on a theme but nothing really NEW).But we DO get a decent story, fine acting, great on-screen chemistry between our two stars (I didn't realize how great until I saw the third movie where they replaced Rachel with someone else as Evie and it just DIDN'T work at all. Mummy 3 is a clunker in a LOT of ways but without Ms Weisz there was none of the enjoyable interaction between her and Brendan Fraser that made this and the first one so enjoyable. And that would have helped make #3 more BEARABLE). Together Brendan and Rachel have a touch of that on-screen magic one sees when William Powell and Myrna Loy are on---or Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Maria Bello, though nice to look at and a good actress just wasn't right for the part. Bad casting ruined the last Mummy movie 3. Well, that plus a lousy script by Gough and Miller who should have stuck to playing Gough-- and crappy direction from Rob Cohen.Sorry I got sidetracked but film three was just SO bad---the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor---it drags ON alright until the inevitable expected foreseen and unbelievably uninteresting by the time they reach it---ending.THIS ONE is a CLASSIC buy it with confidence own it with pride display it with savoir-faire THE MUMMY RETURNS will never let you down.Amaze your friends with trivia not found on IMDB (for instance, that Boris Karloff was Imhotep in the first Mummy movie back in 1932. But when he got his bandages off his name was Ardath Bey (here played by Oded Fehr) That in the Karloff film Ankh-es-en-amoun (loosely tranlated Life of Amoun---or Amoun-Ra) was NOT evil and was played by Zita Johann who died in 1993 but in her last film role she played aLIBRARIAN (RAIDERS OF THE LIVING DEAD 1986). And, of course, that's what Evie is when we first meet her.