Product: The Mummy Returns [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 2.0
A sad end to what could have been a great franchise
The 1999 film "The Mummy" (TM) was one of my favorite action adventure movies in recent years. The characters were interesting, the cast was awesome, and the story was fun. It turned out to be somewhat of a surprise hit so a sequel was inevitable.Unfortunately the sequel, "The Mummy Returns" (TMR) has almost none of the magic the first film posessed. In fact it feels like the film makers just exploited the fans of the first by cranking out a sequel before they had a decent script. There is a fair amount of action and more than enough CGI, but the plot and the script are just not as good as the original. The movie takes several silly flights of fanatasy that include a flying ship and some undead pygmies that live in a forest in the middle of the desert. TMR takes so many liberties that it actually rewrites some of the storyline from the original. Without giving any spoilers we now have a unexplainable backstory that links Evie, Rick and the Mummy. There is also a inexplicably resurrected Anck Su Namun whose existance conflicts with the very premise of the first movie. The biggest let down to me was the change in Evie's character. In the first she was a bookish nerd who when asked who she was while drunk, proudly proclaimed "I, am a Librarian!" Gone was the feisty little nerd that used her brains not her braun. Instead she is a female version of her now husband Rick and that completely changes their chemestry. In the first they rely on each other's strengths, her the brains, him the cunning. In TMR though they are both the prototypical Indiana Jones characters with no chemestry what so ever.There are a few bright spots. John Hannah is back as Evie's bumbling brother Jonathan, although he is a bit underused. Also back is great Oded Fehr as the mysterious Magi warrior Ardeth Bay. The opennig sequence with the Rock is interesting but he is barely in the movie. In my opinion the best scene in the movie had to be the duel between Particia Velasquez and Rachel Weisz.In the end there are not enough bright spots for me to recommend "The Mummy Returns." If you were a fan of the original you may want to give this a look, but this fan was disappointed.