After watching the previous Mummy movies and contemplating the portfolio of work put out by Brendan Fraser, I have come to a conclusion. He needs a new agent. Someone that will tell him, “pass on this one. Trust me.”
 
Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello) lead an adventureless life while their son Alex (Luke Ford) has skipped school in favor of an archeological dig at the tomb of China’s cursed Emperor Han. Rick and Evelyn arrive in Shanghai and reunite with their son only to get caught up in events that release the mummified Han and the chase is on to stop him from becoming immortal.
 
During the first 10 minutes explaining the back story of Emperor Han, one could mistakenly believe there is hope for this film. Once it moves beyond that, the flat acting and bad script quickly deteriorate into a mess where the jumps from one scene to the next leave viewers disoriented and wondering how they arrived there.
 
Why do we go see movies starring Jet Li? For the kung-fu and action scenes, right? The filmmakers obviously didn’t realize that Li’s skills are wasted spending most of his time as a computer-generated clay mummy or riding around in armor engaging in few fights.
 
The supporting characters are as lame, if not more so, than in the first Mummy movies. They seem to exist only to toss out bad one-liners that make the audience groan. The characters played by Michelle Yeoh and Isabella Leong are pretty, fun and interesting, but when they call to the Yeti for help, my frustration with the ridiculousness of this film gets the better of me and I just want it to stop.
 
The father/son squabble has been done to death and is made even worse in this instance by terrible acting.
 
I had hope for this film. I like the concept behind this mummy story and with Li and Yeoh in the cast, there was great expectation for spectacular action sequences, which didn’t happen. The movie did one thing really well. The same thing the first two Mummy films did well… disappoint.
 
I guess you can’t teach old mummy writers new tricks.

Verdict | NOT!