Product: The Mummy Returns [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 1.0
One of the biggest letdowns in cinematic history
I'll preface this by saying that I loved the first Mummy. A great combination of humor, action and special effects mixed with great character acting by every one of the leads brought back the feel of Indiana Jones.So of course, I went to The Mummy Returns hoping to catch another glimpse of what I consider to be the best humor/action movie in the past 5 years. I was sorely disappointed.Essentially, they took everything from the original and rehashed it in the sequel. They cracked almost every good joke from the first movie in the second, a repititious affair that went from slightly painful to excruciating within the first 20 minutes of the film.Combine that with the removal of a central, cohesive plot to be replaced with no less than 5 weakly connected subplots.Plot 1 - the Scorpion King. Sold his soul to Annubis and awakes every 5000 years.Plot 2 - Reincarnation of Anck-Su-Namun (sp) she's back in modern form and helps locate the remains of the mummy.Plot 3 - Reincarnation of Eve. That's right, she's a reincarnation too, the daughter of the pharoah killed in the first movie.Plot 4 - Guess what? Brenden Frasier's a supreme warrior! Yep, he was left at an orphanage (weak!) and has a tatoo on his forearm that means he's a magi warrior.Plot 5 - Resurrection of the mummy - yep, he's back again.So, the evil people use the new Anck-Su-Namun to locate the remains of the mummy, bring him back to life, and then want to use him to kill the scorpion king and take control of his army of warriors. There's only one weapon that can kill him, and it happens to be in Jonathan's possession (wow that's nice!). In the meantime, Evelyn is plagued by dreams of her past life and somehow starts to become this massive warrior woman. Oded Fehr is back as the magi warrior who spends the entire movie telling Brenden's character that he's "the one".Is anyone else lost yet? I am, and I'm the one writing the review!Basically, what is left is a sequel destroyed by overkill. Instead of sticking to the formula that made the original so good (straightforward plot, solid bad guy, good mix of humor and action), they went one step too far and tried to do too much (splintered plot, bad character development, very weak, rehashed humor). The idea of two bad guys could have been great, but the mummy is barely seen during the movie (and when he is you wonder if a 4 year old wrote his part) and the scorpion king is an absolutely atrocious piece of CGI (tip: if you're going to make a CGI bad guy, then don't show him as a real live person beforehand, because you'll never get the likeness right).A great franchise driven completely into the ground and destroyed. Maybe they won't make the same mistake for The Scorpion King, but don't bet on it. Once again proof that to be allowed to make a sequel for a hit movie, you MUST have a review committee of normal people watch you so they can tell you when "you've gone too far!!!".