 |
_MOVIES | |||||||||||||||||||
|
THE
MUMMY RETURNS
review by Joseph B. Mauceri
REVIEW: Will THE MUMMY RETURNS do gang busters at the box office? Sure!You have to give Stephen Sommers credit for creating a ³poor man¹s² ³Indiana Jones. He locks up many of the loose ends and plots holes of the original, but takes THE MUMMY RETURNS way out into the realms of the fantastical. Hordes of berserking Jackal gods, demonic pygmies, mummy guards that take a licking and keep on ticking are some of the nightmarish entities that populated Sommers¹ plot. The plot itself borrows elements for the classic Ray Harryhausen to ³The Phantom Menace.² Case in point, the scene where the heros are trying to out run a Im-Ho-Tep generated wall of water in their jet propelled balloon looks like a scene inspired by the ³Ten Commandments² combined with the pod race scene from ³The Phantom Menace.² There in lies my major bone of contention with the film, the look. With ILM on board to tackle the visual effects, THE MUMMY RETURNS employs many of the techniques used by the team to bring ³The Phantom Menace² to the screen. With the folks at ILM hard at work on the next ³Star Wars² prequel, the look of the work on this film is best described as ³canned.² A real disappointment comes when we see the demonic incarnation of the Rock as the Scorpion King ¯ it looks plastic. With all the talk of digitizing actors and the advances in special effect technology, a Ray Harryhausen stop-motion puppet would have looked better. My second problem with the film is that it goes so far into the fantastical, and the canned plastic look of the creators, I never felt that the heros were in any real jeopardy. Sure the bad guys get slaughter by the droves, but there is a lack of visual carnage. Hell, in the opening sequence the Scorpion King is locked in a brutal battle ¯ all kinds of swords, axes and spears are being used ¯ and there is not one drop of blood seen. It¹s a far cry from when Spielberg first purchased the ³PG-13" rating for ³Temple of Doom² and Indiana Jones not only got his ass kicked, but we saw a crazed shaman pull the beating heart out of a sacrificial victim. Stephen Sommers demonstrates that he has the chops to deliver an epic Hollywood adventure. I admire Sommers screenplay work on such films as ³Deep Rising,² ³Tom and Huck,² ³The Jungle Book² and ³Gunmen,² and, although he ties up the lose ends in ³The Mummy,² found his story too fantastical and the most cliched screenplay he¹s written to date. Until Lucas, Spielberg and Harrison can get together on another Indiana Jones film, films like THE MUMMY RETURNS should keep audiences from jonesing. OFFICIAL
WEB SITE:
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
SYNOPSIS:
After an opening sequence set in ancient Egypt, to introduce the
Scorpion King, THE MUMMY RETURNS jumps forward to 1933 and a typical
³Indiana Jones² sequence. The action yields the Scorpion King¹s
bracelet, uncovered by Rick (Fraser), Evelyn (Weisz) and their son
(Hannah). In the meantime, Im-Ho-Tep¹s followers are trying to locate
him and are own their own quest to find the bracelet. Hoping to
resurrect ³The Mummy,² they want him to defeat the Scorpion King
so he can control his army of the undead and conquer the world.