Return of the Mummy
Last night I saw The Mummy Returns with Arnold Vosloo, Rachel Weisz and Brendan Frasier. I realize it's about five years old at this point, but that's OK; I have never minded being a little behind the times. If, for some reason, you haven't seen the film, you probably want to stop now.
I was struck by how much less plausible this second film was. I realize that The Mummy featured an ancient Egyptian curse that gave its victim Ultimate Cosmic Power (and who thought that one was a good idea, I'd like to know) and the concept that one person could lift, much less run with, about two cubic feet of solid gold; overall, however, there were far fewer things that made no sense at all. Really, there was magic and the cluster of inaccuracies surrounding the "Book of the Dead", and that was about it. (Well, and all the servant-mummies wearing the crown of Upper Egypt. Costume designer probably just thought it was a cool hat.) Heck, given magic and pulp conventions, it was a really solid film, and great fun.
The Mummy Returns, well, wasn't. It went for the same kind of rollicking fun, and just missed it. OK, small child who's not completely obnoxious, but that doesn't make up for much. Too many scenes were ripoffs of the first film--big wave, I am looking at you here--and things just kept being pointless, setting off my Same Names filter without any particular purpose: the sai-fighting Princess Nefertiri is the big offender here, but how about the fact that the gasbag on Comic-Relief-Guy's balloon was about a quarter of the size it should have been? Or Evie's costuming, which looked like what the costume designer thinks a dashing female archaeologist ought to wear today, run through a very light World-War-Two filter. (At least in the first film she wore skirts.) Or Alex's obviously aluminum slingshot, or the Villain Chick's costuming which abandoned the World-War-Two filter entirely and gave us latex and nylon pseudo-Egyptian clubwear. Or the entire opening montage, which went: "There's this guy whose big army got killed, so he wandered off into the desert and dedicated himself to Anubis in return for victory. Anubis gave him a big supernatural army, but took it away just as the guy was about to actually conquer something. Now you have to be careful not to wake him up." Huh? (Also, I could be wrong, but I seem to remember seeing a film in which the Scorpion King was the good guy. This does not square, no matter how you arrange the continuity.)
On the other hand, there were some good bits. Why was Imhotep so obsessive about using Evie's body to resurrect Ankh-sun-Amun? Because Evie's the reincarnation of Pharaoh's beloved daughter, and the irony appealed to him. OK, that works. The bit where Imhotep and Rick are both hanging from the edge of the crack into (from the visuals) Hell--Rick yells at Evie to run away, and she of course comes and saves him; Imhotep pleads with Ankh-sun-Amun to help him, and she flees, whereupon he lets himself fall in despair. Quite nice, and turns his story into a tragedy of "man who learned better".
And the scene where Evie dies. Brendan Frasier is a truly fine actor, and I wish he were doing more things. You wouldn't think that the guy who produced George of the Jungle could be a good actor, and you wouldn't expect something as fluffy as The Mummy Returns to contain an opportunity to show off his chops, but he is and it does. It was a truly affecting moment, for all I was pretty sure they were going to find some way to resurrect her (which of course they did), and a lot of it was due to the stellar job Fraser did with his material. Weisz, alas, got to lie there and flutter her eyelashes, but she has a few other good moments so it was OK to let Fraser have that one.
Overall, I'm not sorry I watched The Mummy Returns, but I'm never going to watch it again, either. The Mummy, on the other hand, is on my list of favorites, and if you haven't seen it you should.