The Mummy - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (From Surrey Comet)

The Mummy - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

12:38pm Wednesday 6th August 2008

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Now I must admit, I’m a huge fan of adventure films and I was looking forward to stretching out (because you do in these large West End preview cinemas!) and just letting myself get lost in the magic. Which is exactly what I did.

Anyone who is a fan of the Mummy franchise won’t be disappointed and this is exactly what they came here for. The film is well shot and Director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious and xXx) actually took his crew to China to achieve the look and feel of the story with its beautiful vista landscapes. The film also has some great set pieces and it’s good and noisy too.

Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello of A History of Violence) are back!

And after enduring a few years of boring retirement they are both quick to be lured into one more big adventure.

They head off to China where their ‘not so little’ boy Alex (the Australian born Luke Ford) has been double crossed and tricked into unearthing the Dragon Emperor (Jet Li).

Along the way they pick up Evelyn’s brother Jonathan (John Hannah) pretty much just for comedy relief and also enlist the help of one of Rick’s old buddies Desi “Mad Dog” Maguire (Liam Cunningham) who is the obligatory drunken ex-military pilot but just happens to be ‘the best dam pilot Rick’s ever known’.

Together they set out to stop the ‘unstoppable’ Emperor Mummy from his quest of world domination.

The film opens 2000 years in the past where a betrayed sorceress Zi Yuan (Michelle Yeoh of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) has put a curse on the Emperor and turned him to clay and his 10,000 strong warriors have become a marvellously well aligned Terracotta Army.

The sorceress Zi still guards the tomb with the aid of her beautiful daughter Lin (Isabella Leong) a young acclaimed Chinese actress. Lin also becomes the love interest with the O’Connell’s son Alex. However we discover that Lin is also 2,000 years old but as Alex remarks ‘Hey, I don’t mind older women’.

When the power crazy Mummy is brought back to life by a deranged loyal worshipper, a modern day Chinese General who’s only wish is to serve his master and raise the army of long dead soldiers (sounds familiar?). The General and his men escort the Emperor through the Himalayas to find the mysterious lost city of Shangri-La whereupon he can become mortal once again and so become immortal…if you see what I mean?

Jet Li plays a menacing Emperor and shows that he can still ‘kick-ass’ with the best of them. The O’Connell team head them off at the Pass! and do battle with the Emperor and his bandits but luckily Lin calls on the help of her little friends the ‘Yeti’, which I felt was the introduction of some unnecessary CGI ‘missing links’ and was a little bit daft…but kids will love em!

This is just what I needed after a hard day at work. It was only when I was on my way home that I started to think more about it and came to the assumption that it’s quite a tired formula. The characters don’t seem to have much character and the only real difference is that the action has moved from Africa to China. Evelyn who was previously played by our own English rose Rachel Weisz has now been replaced by American actress Maria Bello who has an over the top stuffy English accent, which will no doubt keep the American audience happy and I’m afraid, call me a killjoy but I couldn’t stop thinking about the age difference between Alex and his parents. I’m not sure how old Alex is suppose to be but the actor Luke Ford (27) is only 14 years younger that Maria Bellos and actually there is only 10 years between him and his original Mum Rachel Weisz!

All being said and done The Mummy – Tomb of the Dragon Emperor did it’s job well with pure entertainment and took me back to the old days of Saturday morning pictures when you never took notice of any pretentious movie critic and just sat glued to the screen munching popcorn.