Review of The Mummy Returns (2001) by Harry W — 01 Dec 2013

After the thrilling experience of The Mummy I was very excited to witness its sequel, and the intro to The Mummy Returns Is good because the story behind The Scorpion King himself is interesting and sets up an interesting figure for the story. But unfortunately as the story moves to present day, The Mummy Returns doesn't really have a story that works as a legitimate Arguement for the continuation of the series, and the addition of the main characters' son Alex O'Connell is not necessary and has no chance of benefitting the story. These are two issues that set The Mummy Returns not to succeed, but hey I figured like with the first entry in The Mummy series it may get better with time.

Unfortunately that was a falsified hope. Director Stephen Sommers turned The Mummy Returns into what I feared he would: a generic and unbalanced adventure film with excessive random dynamics aimed to be family friendly. It was like a rip-off of Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom only set in Egypt and without any sense of intensity or thrills. This was exactly what I did not want.

Issues stemming from the films predecessor The Mummy can mainly be attributed to its flat jokes which were hit and miss. In The Mummy Returns they are all miss and the entire story becomes one big joke itself, and not a funny one.

Like I said before, The Mummy Returns does not feature a plot which encourages continuation of the movie series, but it is instead a rehash of The Mummy without any originality. The dynamics are largely the same, and I can point to one exact scene which supports this: the scene in which the protagonists escape the titular mummy's flood in a dirigible is an exact replica of in the previous film where they escaped his sandstorm in a plane. Both times Imhotep's face appears in the disaster, and the second time around it falls flat. The entire story is bland, save from scenes featuring The Scorpion King which are fairly cool. The best moment of the film is in the final scene where Rick O'Connell battles Mathayus, a CGI hybrid of a scorpion and Dwayne Johnson. It's cool, but it's brief. And that's the main problem with The Mummy Returns, the action is significantly lesser. There are few sword fights or shootouts, and I'm only likely to ever remember the sight of Brendan Frasier battling a scorpion with the head of The Rock.

And another serious issue is that the story adds in the character Alex O'Connell who becomes an object of the adventure, and he is a child. Freddie Boath is not such a good actor, but he has no strong character to work with. He has an annoying child who tells flat jokes and becomes the cause of a lot of the chaos in the story, and seriously it's unwanted. The Mummy Returns is supposed to be about discovery and battling Egyptian enemies with swords and guns. Unfortunately with Freddie Boath as part of the cast it can be automatically guessed that the action is toned down and jay he is there to appeal to the more family friendly audience. That's an appropriate guess.

Really, The Mummy Returns only works as a technical achievement because it has all the necessary visual effects, strong cinematography and editing to pass off as a visual experience, but people hoping for more are likely to find disappointment. I know I did.

Lastly, the film is such a disappointment that it downgrades the characters and therefore weakens the efforts of the actors. This especially pisses me off because Brendan Frasier's finest work was as Rick O'Connell in The Mummy, but The Mummy Returns gives him no challenges and barely any weapons, causing the story to lack a great character or even an action hero. Brendan Frasier does his best, but Stephen Sommers overwhelms it with his poor direction, and this even severely damages Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell and Rachel Weisz's performance as her because her presence is so small that it almost is not felt. Only John Hannah is still the same, and even he has nothing work with.

So Stephen Sommers really does nothing to pay justice to fans of The Mummy or the hard working cast in The Mummy Returns, instead using his film as an excuse to showcase visual effects and cinematography without the feel of a good adventure.