Review of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) by Stef — 26 Dec 2010

***SPOILER WARNING***.

First off, I love this franchise. Or I did. I don't know. The thing I have to ask myself about this movie is, does my love for Jet Li make up for the fact that the movie's missing Ardeth Bay?

The answer is no, no it does not.

Sure, the SFX are pretty awesome, and Brendan Fraser is as good as ever, and Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh are all kinds of fierce, and John Hannah's hilarious, but...

Compared to the earlier movies this one's comes across as dumbed down and cheap, with people setting their butts on fire and yaks throwing up in paper bags. Throw in Maria Bello as fake!Evelyn, a REALLY annoying Luke Ford, the lack of Oded Fehr and the fact that Isabella Leong plays an immortal guardian who has waited 2000 years to kill the emperor but who, in the end, allows someone else to take her emperor-killing-knife so that she can spend ten minutes crying over her dead mother and then only JUST make it in time to see said emperor explode into tiny pieces, courtesy of the really annoying Luke Ford? I usually don't give a rat's ass about strong female characters but dang, that was kind of lousy. As if everything I listed didn't already make the movie suck already.

Also, there is no Ardeth Bay/Oded Fehr. I can't remember if I mentioned that earlier or not.

Let me put it like this: Watching this movie I found myself, for the first time since the franchise's beginning, rooting for the mummy. Skip this one. Trust me.