Amaryllis and I went out with some friends for a date night last night. We saw the Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. It was OK for what it was, a popcorn flick with a kid in a candy store special effects budget (In comparison to subtler CGI effects films like Iron Man, it looks like they might have stretched the buck a little too far).
Brendan Fraser is an interesting one. I missed him in Encino Man, and was introduced to him though more serious works like School Ties, With Honors, and Gods and Monsters. So for me, I have this illusion that he has been slumming for 2/3 of his career, when in reality he has a handful of solid films among some interesting box office fare (Blast from the Past anyone?). The Mummy series seems to suit him, by allowing him to be quirky without downright goofy. For me this entry into the franchise falls somewhere between the first and second. The general story concept is better than the second, but not as good as the first.
What really hurt the film was the absence of Rachel Weisz. Once she decided that she wasn't going to be involved they should have written her part out of the script. That way poor Maria Bello wouldn't have tried to play someone she obviously wasn't, and the movie wouldn't be forcing you to swallow Brendan Frasier having a son old enough to be a college drop out. (Word of advice: the appearance versus actual age difference works for Sean Connery and Harrison Ford. It doesn't for Brendan Fraser and Luke Ford. Maybe Brendan Fraser should have grown a beard.).
Jet Lee and Michelle Yeoh were wonderful, and their fight sequence was too brief for the build up. The sequence is over American quick as opposed to the 5 minute intensely choreographed affair I dreamed of.
INSERT RANT:
Ok I have one real beef with a lot of CGI films these days. Can we have some CGI without the little humorous asides inserted into nearly every sequence? Yes we get it, an animator's life is hell, and director's love the new toys. It doesn't mean that every film has to have a Charlie Chaplain slap stick sequence in it, or that CGI animals have to poke out of every nook and cranny acting like teenagers on an MTV production.
Sometimes I long for the days when CGI was so expensive that if an animation team blew a million dollars making the zombie in the third row pick his nose, someone was getting fired.
END RANT
The highlight of the evening though was picking up the kids from the babysitter. We walked into the door to see Kate in the middle of a very serious game of Uno with Gabe. We watched her play a handful of cards, and she was doing really well without prompts accept for the more complex action cards. A guess soon we'll walk in to find her displaying a full house and raking $5 dollar bills across the table.
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2 comments:
I loved the first Mummy movie. This sequel was without any kind of charm. The dialogue was dismal and would have left anyone from 1946 scratching their head because it was full of hackneyed modern-day phrases. Brendan "Blast from the Past" Fraser should have known that. The movie's makers had absolutely no interest or skill in creating subtle or sophisticated or even believable relationships between the parents and their children. The only part that was easy to believe was when the son said, "We haven't been a family for a long time
And I agree almost completely with what you said about the computer animators being allowed their giggles at the expense of the film's credibility and dignity (point in case: when, after watching a baddie sail through the air, one of the Yeti makes the sign for a football field goal), BUT I laughed out loud when that one zombie accidentally knocked off another zombie's head with the shovel he was carrying.
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