The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

superb.............

williamsgwynfa [Highly rated reviewer] , 30/01/2008

this film is the third installment of 'The Mummy' franchise, and doesnot disappoint. This time, the O’Connells must stop a mummy awoken from a 2,000-year-old curse, who threatens to plunge the world into his merciless, unending service.

Doomed by a double-crossing sorceress (played by Michelle Yeoh) to spend eternity in suspended animation, China's ruthless Dragon Emperor and his 10,000 warriors have laid forgotten for centuries, entombed in clay as a vast, silent terracotta army.

But when adventurer Alex O'Connell is tricked into awakening the ruler from eternal sleep, the reckless young archaeologist must seek the help of the only people, who know more than he does about taking down the undead: his parents.

As the Emperor comes back to life, the O'Connell's and Evie's brother Jonathan, find his quest for world domination has only intensified over the millennia.

Striding the Far East with unimaginable supernatural powers, the Emperor Mummy will rouse his legion as an unstoppable, otherworldly force...unless the O’Connells can stop him first.

watch it to find out what happens.

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1 too many

A customer from England , 08/08/2008

After watching the glorious new Batman movie, my friend and I snuck in to the screen opposite for a random piece of entertainment and we were plesently surprised to find ourselfes in a showing of Mummy 3.

Great eh? No. It was painful. From the off, it was clear the acting was going to be bad, only to get worse as the movie progressed. The supposedly humourous ...

It's not worth my time to continue ... I left the film early and so will this review.

I got my just deserts.

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Great family adventure film...

PaulaWestwood from Ashton-Under-Lyne [Highly rated reviewer] , 07/08/2008

Why the popular critics slated this I will never know, O.K. when it comes out on DVD it will be packaged in a red wax cover with Edam stamped on it, because,yes, it is pretty cheesy... But come on guys its not serious high cinema, it is a hugely fun adventure film that does more than it promoses on the tin, and has some superb effects too. This time Brendan Fraser is his usual deadpan funny/serious self, not everyones cup of tea but suits the Mummy Franchise ideally. The mummies awakened this time are the Chinese teracotta army, and their emperor bent on destruction after millenia entombed by a wizard, all brilliantly brought to cinematographic life. All in all a great adventure and effect full family movie that is definately worth a watch.

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Knock Off Nigel does Indianna Jones

UncleBuck from Eastbourne [Highly rated reviewer] , 20/08/2008

My god it was garbage.

Just back from Cineworld, using a combination of Unlimited Card and Orange Wednesday we got in for nothing...and that was too expensive.

This was just an Indianna Jones knock-off and had none of the charm of the previous two Mummy films.

Very poor script and plot and abismal one liners from John Hannah was just cringworthy.

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The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

SAI81 from Tonbridge [Highly rated reviewer] , 13/10/2008

The Mummy was basically a shameless Indiana Jones rip off, but as shameless Indiana Jones rip offs go it was pretty good. Fast paced, fun, sometimes scary and generally exciting, it did its job by providing 110 minutes of entertainment; nothing more, nothing less. The Mummy Returns upped the stupidity quotient, diluted the fun with an annoying child, and was released with its effects unfinished, it didn’t really seem possible for the third instalment in the series to be worse than the second, but new Director Rob Cohen is giving it a go anyway.

First things first; The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor features precisely no mummies. None. There’s an army of reanimated terracotta warriors, and an army of zombies, and a couple of immortals, and some CGI yetis, and a cow. No mummies though. So, with the level of intelligence established for us by the essentially libellous title, it’s no surprise to find that Tomb Raider… sorry… The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is a big plate of stupid, with a side order of idiocy for good measure.

The script, if such a document indeed existed, is so full of holes that it resembles a Swiss cheese, but plot holes are forgivable in a movie like this, which is essentially a rollercoaster ride, as long as the ride is fun. The ride isn’t fun.

The film has far too many, let’s be kind and call them characters, and few of them serve much purpose, least of all the returning O’Connell family. Aside from freakishly old son Alex (Ford, who would have had to be born when his very young looking movie parents were barely into their teens) none of the family needs to exist here, and indeed there is a painful process of shoehorning them into the story. But Rick (Fraser) and Evelyn (Bello, replacing Rachel Weisz) are the most vital characters in the world by comparison to Evelyn’s brother Jonathan (a visibly annoyed Hannah) who exists solely to provide soul crushingly unfunny comic relief. The film is so over populated that a few promising characters get lost in the shuffle; Anthony Wong makes for a bland villainous foil to Jet Li, but Wong’s own right hand woman, the gorgeous Jessey Meng, has the potential to be far more interesting, displaying real charisma in her few scenes, but she’s shunted aside and gets a stupid and anti-climactic final scene, when really she should have had a nice big fight with Isabella Leong’s character. Leong is a talented young actress, see Spider Lilies for proof. Here though she’s reduced to looking pretty (which she does very well), simpering in Luke Ford’s general direction, and expositing awkwardly with appalling dialogue in broken English.

The stars are little better. Brendan Fraser seems like he’s going through the motions here, even the quips he used to be so good at delivering land with a thud. It’s a real shame to see him continually wasted in this sort of fare when we know, from Gods and Monsters, that there’s a fine actor on screen who isn’t being allowed to stretch. Maria Bello is one of the best actresses of her generation, from the first time I saw her in ER I’ve been a big fan and her presence alone is enough to convince me a film is worth seeing, but we have now found something she can’t do; an English accent. Bless her, she works incredibly hard at it, but it sounds like an American who has seen too many Merchant Ivory movies putting on what they think an English accent is, sadly Bello works so hard at the accent she forgets to betray any emotion in her performance. Luke Ford, an Australian actor in his first major role, is in another class of bad acting entirely. It’s hard to decide what’s worse; the stunning woodenness of his every utterance or the fact that with every sentence his hilarious accent circumnavigates the globe from England, to Australia, to the US and back.

Jet Li has presence on screen, but even he’d admit that he’s not the greatest of actors and is far more comfortable fighting than emoting. Why, then, for the love of God, does he have barely five minutes of fighting (three more if you count the bits where he is replaced by a CGI monster I guess) in this movie? His character is dull too, Imhotep at least had some depth, a reason for his villainy, but the emperor is just a b*stard. Michelle Yeoh isn’t a trained martial artist like Li, but she’s done her fair share of amazing fight scenes in movies and the chance to, at last, see them face off was the main reason I bothered going to this flick in the first place. If this movie had been made in Hong Kong, primarily for a native audience, their fight would have lasted ten minutes or more, it would have taken several dramatic turns within that one sequence, and the choreography would have been awesome. Instead we get two minutes of overcut dullness, which does justice to neither of these legendary screen fighters and renders what should be the film’s most thrilling moment an annoyingly missed opportunity. Yeoh does, though, give the best performance in the movie, which is damning her with faint praise, but it’s praise nevertheless.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is technically well realised, particularly in a too short battle between two reanimated armies, but otherwise it’s a pretty depressing affair. One to miss.

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Mummy

A customer from Brighton , 31/12/2008

I love my mummy and thought this film would be all about her. Imagine then my disappointment when confronted with this dreadful fest of bandaged bad acting. - William Keay - aged 6

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