He’s taking the fall, sweetheart (7/13/01)
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The Mummy Returns. [Stephen Sommers, 2001.]
The rotting corpse of an ancient Egyptian magus is revived from the dead; should he not be thwarted, he’ll rally the legions of the jackal-headed god to his banner and conquer the world. — Again. — With: Rachel Weisz [whose heart doesn’t seem to be in it] as the intrepid and omniscient albeit accidentprone Egyptologist, now revealed to be the reincarnation of Nefertiti; Brendan Fraser as, well, Brendan Fraser [the idea that he, too, is really someone else is introduced but not developed]; Freddie Boath as their cute and extremely precocious kid, conduit for the supernatural forces that mark the trail to the lost lair of the Scorpion King; John Hannah as Rachel’s ne’erdowell brother [at least his Egyptian has improved]; Oded Fehr as the Arab dude with the cuneiforms on his face, embodiment of the Wisdom of the Sands; Arnold Vosloo [in various stages of decomposition] as the Gott of Rot; Patricia Velazquez as his now-reincarnated girlfriend [just watch them sucking face]; The Rock mainly as template for some fancy CGI [compare Layla Roberts in
Beowulf]; rats [but see Herzog’s remake of
Nosferatu], scarab beetles [but see the first installment], tarantulas [but see
Raiders], and scorpions [but see
L’Age D’Or]; pygmy mummies [but see
Jungle Moon Men]; some remarkable synthetic environments [but check out the trailer for
Final Fantasy]; the balloon from
Baron Munchausen; the domino thing again, this time with pillars; a chase through the city to London Bridge that somehow is simultaneous homage to Tex Avery and Sergei Eisenstein; an Evil Librarian; and what we’ve all been expecting modern archaeology to provide, namely, conclusive evidence of the influence of Hong Kong action choreography on the martial arts of the ancient Egyptians. There’s also brief mention of the evergreen theme of Freemasonry — cut short, presumably, because
Tomb Raider has a lock on that franchise. But if Lara Croft doesn’t do better than this, I’ll be blowing off the rest of the summer blockbusters in favor of a leisurely review of the middle works of Antonioni. Meanwhile, you have to think the money has gone to Sommers’ head. — And have to wonder what Cocteau might have done with this apparatus: a CGI voyage through the Land of the Dead? Orpheus versus the Reality Engine? — Did they really garble the name of Nefertiti deliberately because Beavis and Butthead were going to snicker? — Why doesn’t The Rock do that thing with the eyebrow? — Oh, never mind.
I’m starting to feel sorry for poor Vosloo: the guy keeps coming back from the dead for this babe, and it never works out. Why not let him conquer the world for once? The worst thing that could happen would be another sequel.
____________I’ll help you scrape the burned rubber off your hood (7/13/01)
