Fulltime Casual - An Australian Film and TV Podcast

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor brings the series back to the silver screen with a new mummy that isn’t, 3 bouncing yetis, and an airsick vomiting Yak. Yeah it sounds great.

Jet. Fucking. Li. At one time his name would have been enough for me to go watch anything and grin like fiend right the way through. That was before the Westernisation of Jet and his progression from Danny the Dog, to Fearless, then The Forbidden Kingdom, and now The Mummy.

It turns out that Jet Li is actually a pretty god-damn average actor, but still better than Statham and not so wooden.

My biggest bone of contention with The Mummy is that it felt like the film makers just didn’t give a  fuck about what they were putting on screen. A key actor has been replaced, Brendan Fraser’s Australian son looks more like his brother - (probably because there’s only 13 years between them), and there are seemingly random additions to the plot, probably because they couldn’t think of anything else to progress the story (”I know, suddenly Yetis!” “Yeah, on Springs!” “Oh and now he’s a dragon!”).

It’s a B grade movie with far too much budget, if Brendan Fraser didn’t take himself so seriously it could be passed off as parody. Instead it almost seemed like a self-promotion piece, lacking any of the charisma from the earlier films. Directed by Rob Cohen of The Fast and the Furious, the film is tedious and never gives the audience a reason to become anxious - something that should be pretty important in a monster film. Instead this is designed to be fluffy family-friendly comedy/action film and even on that level it fails: it’s not funny, you don’t care what happens to the characters, and really you’re just waiting for it to all be over so you can go home and floss the popcorn out of your teeth.

Not as bad as Hellboy but it certainly tries to come close.

2 stars.