Product: The Mummy Returns [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 3.0
Typical Hollywood something-for-everyone approach to film ma
While Summers' first effort at the mummy remake business was a delightful tongue-in-cheek pastiche of the 1930s films, his The Mummy Returns is a great disappointment. The much awaited sequel-some of the fan sites were abuzz from the moment the decision to make it was even rumored-attempted to cater to the interests of almost everyone, dissolving into a bland tale whose only claim on the viewer's attention was its complexity. The film was overly serious and melodramatic. The theme of reincarnation seemed to have been introduced to salvage an otherwise rather banal plot. It also allowed for the introduction of some wonderful period scenes with colorful costumes and the only interesting martial arts activity in the film (though not necessarily good-those in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are infinitely better). The film relies heavily on CGI, but other than the splendid recreations of Ancient Egypt most of the computer work is trite, consisting of little toothy monsters and the return of the skeleton army.Again the history is atrocious. Seti I was not stabbed to death. The Egyptian museum possesses his mummy among the collection of its royal mummies, so that's definite. Nefertiri was the first and favorite of his Queens (her tomb is among the most beautiful and elaborate in the Valley of the Queens near Luxor) and not his daughter. Imhotep is an Old Kingdom architect, and the Scorpion King is an early pre-dynastic king. Ahkhsunamon was the heiress to the Thutmosid dynasty (the XVIIIth not the XIXth) one of the six daughters of Akhenaton and Nefertiti, and the wife of Tutankhamon (remember him?). Etc, etc, etc. It's unfortunate, since the errors in the first film could have provided the plot to the second; all Summers had to do was figure out plausible explanations for some of them-the movement of the pyramids from Cairo to Luxor being one of the few that would be difficult to explain away short of extraterrestrials. I did it in my spare moments at work-few enough in ICU-and came up with a wonderful, historic, internally consistent plot. Certainly Summers has more imagination than I do!Although most of the central characters reappeared and were played by the same actors, they had been transmogrified to such an extent that only their names and faces remained the same! With the single exception of Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bay, most of the characters did more morphing than the mummy himself. O'Connell, for instance, has become a mere shadow of himself. Marriage seems to have robbed him of the last shreds of his sense of the absurd, and even when he is at his best, when dealing with his erstwhile buddy Izzy Buttons (Shaun Parkes), the latter steals every scene they're in together. Rick's almost frenetic activity in the first film and his sharp as tacks wit are missing and missed in the second. Maybe it's an advertisement against the unhealthiness of matrimony for males!The individuals who were most disappointingly out of character were the two central women, Evie and Ankhsunamun. The former has lost the ditzy, accident prone intellectual aura that lent her such charm in the first movie. The Evie of the first film was a woman one might well see someone like O'Connell taking risks to rescue, a bright person whose brash naivete might both exasperate and attract. The Evie of the Mummy Returns has an edge. She's sexual rather than sexy, and she's definitely not funny. Where is the wonderful woman who proudly, if drunkenly, states "I am a librarian!" and passes out mid-kiss, collapsing face first into the sand.Of all the characters, Ankhsunamon's change is the most disappointing. Here is a woman who sacrifices her very life for her lover in the first film, certain that his own love and devotion will do whatever it takes to resurrect her if he can. In the first movie he nearly succeeds. In the second, she has somehow managed to be reincarnated and attempts to bring him back from the dead for little other reason than to achieve power. She is no longer the almost feline creature who exudes strong sexual allure that she was in the first film. Instead of a seductress, she's now a, harsh looking Vogue model type, like a harden femme fatal out of a Dashiell Hammett murder mystery. Her motives seem less certain, her devotion to her lover less apparent, and her courage more in doubt. Her recoil in the face of danger seems merely a literary contrivance, a foil to Evie's unfailing allegiance to Rick.Subverting his part as title character in order to bring in fans of the professional wrestling stars, Imhotep goes from a man with a mission to a man with feet of clay by the end of the story. He becomes a foil for the new focus of the film, The Rock. This is a great disappointment, since his character's problems are central to the movement of the whole story, even the whole series. When both Rick and Imhotep were confronted with the evil of the Scorpion King, one almost expected them to work together to defeat him, perhaps deferring their own conflict to a latter episode. Instead Summers merely chooses to make the issue a contrast between a couple devoted to one another by virtue of love and one devoted to power alone.Oded Fehr, whose character Ardeth Bay delighted the audience of the first movie, embellishes the film more often, but his appearances seem more ornamental than purposeful, a sop to the millions of fans who enjoyed him in the first film. Surely more could have been done with his character.Probably the most delightful pair of characters were Rick and Evie's son, Alex, and his arch enemy the towering black henchman assigned as his jailer. The two were perfect foils for one another, and by the end one almost hoped that the latter would change teams, for whatever self-seeking purposes, and save the boy.