Runtime: 130 minutes
Directed by: Stephen Sommers
Starring: The main players from the first, plus The Rock
From: Universal
This movie was utter nonsense… albeit, enjoyable, pulpy nonsense. It hadn’t been seen in ages but there was no memory of just how preposterous it got. Of course, the dominant memory for all these years was… yes, the giant scorpion in the room, i.e. THAT special effect. When it’s still known now for being one of the worst ever seen-holy cow, it’s still atrocious now-that will happen. Then again, a large portion of the CG in general has aged like moldy cheese. According to hearsay, the effects were REALLY rushed due to Universal rushing the film to the big screen; that isn’t hard to believe.
Perhaps I’m a little generous in my rating; after all, it is much sillier and OOT than even the first Mummy movie from ’99. You really don’t want to scrutinize this plot which literally revives Imhotep and introduces The Scorpion King… who is only in the beginning and the end of the film. At the time, I never could have predicted The Rock would be a huge movie star for a time. To the movie’s benefit, for being over 2 hours it moves relatively quickly so boredom was at a minimum. Such details as heroic Arabic character Ardeth Bay still kicking ass is appreciated, as is the fight between Rachel Weisz and Patrica Velasquez requiring no stunt doubles (although Lord was there some obvious computer effects) as both performers trained months to do it themselves. So is a precocious child character (the lead’s son) who aside from a few scenes wasn’t that irritating.
The laughs (Jonathan was an improvement over the first, & he was fine in that), mild horror scares and my enjoyment of both the lead characters & ones making their debut-I had no memory of seeing a young Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje-meant that for all the movie’s faults, it still is more delightful to me than most modern blockbusters. I can roll with such ideas as Evelyn the librarian suddenly morphing into an action heroine (the retconning, not so much) when it’s an inoffensive Indiana Jones pastiche.
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