Review of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) by Elliot N — 21 Sep 2010

You know a good adventure movie when you see it, right? It will have mostly believable characters, good action and characters, amazing scenes, and very important is peril...the idea that something could go wrong, the hero could slip into a pool of acid or the heroine might choose the wrong door and fall into a pit of spiders, it may not happen but at least you're on the edge of your seat rooting for the heroes to win, the treasure to be found.

Well, The Mummy, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is not it. What a stiff, cardboard cutout, tired CGI effects movie. The first Mummy was fun, the second one was a frolic, but this one? In TV, they have a term called Jumping the Shark that means a moment of such unbelievability that it pulls you out of the movie.

Not good. The term was coined after an episode of Happy Days when Fonzie saved the day by jumping over a shark with water ski's...literally. Very unbelievable. Very un-Fonzie. Well, in this Mummy, a pack of Yeti save the heroes mid-movie from an angry Chinese Emperor and an avalanche of snow.

Yeti = The Abominable Snowmen. Yes, a pack of roaring, white Yeti. Skip this movie and go see Raiders of the Lost Ark by Spielberg or the 1930's Adventures of Robin Hood. The only reason why I'm rating this movie two stars is because the production values are above Roger Corman's.

The idea of an adventure movie is to...well...have an adventure. You don't here.