Mummy Returns Review
by Ishmael Williams
Okay, let's get right to it: I liked this one.
I thought it was a ride, and a good one to boot. Returning are Brendan
Fraser and Rachel Wiesz, reprising their roles from the first film, only now
they are married, and apparently happily so. Rounding out the good guy
returns are John Hannah, who plays brother to the Wiesz character, and Oded
Fehr, who plays a desert nomad dedicated to keeping the mummy in his tomb.
Opposing them we have the return of Arnold Vosloo as Im-Ho-Tep, the mummy
himself, and Patricia Velasquez as Anck-Su-Namun, his love.
Now reincarnated, Anck-Su-Namun is seeking to revive her love, Im-Ho-Tep,
for your basic world domination and subjugation plot. For a variety of
fairly entertaining reasons, it's up to Brendan Fraser and Rachel Wiesz to
stop them. One thing I particularly love are the references to the first
time these four faced each other. Im-Ho-Tep remembers both hero and
heroine, and bears a grudge.
I thought it a good action flick, with some fairly suspenseful moments.
There are times when the CGI effects overshadow the actors a bit. But
Fraser rises above much of that with his seeming knock-off of Indiana Jones,
and Rachel Wiesz' character, Evie O'Connel, has developed nicely in the
seemingly 10 years since we saw them last. She's even more feisty and
daring than in her previous incarnation. Her brother has not changed much,
and neither has the desert nomad. As for Fraser, his O'Connell character
seems much the same as well, but a bit more subdued and tamed. I doubt that
he was originally all that wild to begin with, but here he appears even more
- domesticated.
The lad who plays their son does so with great glee, and looks like he's
having as much fun as the adults. Vosloo successfully recreates all of the
malevolent charm and menace as he displayed in the original.
It's hard to write about this movie without giving things away. It's not
academy award material, almost no adventure flick is. It goes a little
beyond the original, and I saw it as different film, and a continuation of
the story and the conflict. There were new elements that added new
motivations, and some old motivations that still work.
I do have a quibble with two things brought out in this movie about two of
the characters. To me, they seemed unnecessary, and there were, in my
opinion, better ways of handling the plot elements these represented.
Still, I'd see it again, at full evening movie price, which is probably the
highest compliment one can pay any film. I'm wondering if there will be a
part 3... ?
Check out our other Mummy Returns Review.
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The Mummy Returns
Three
Beakers
(out of five)
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Ishmael I. Williams is a fan of both movies and television, and
doesn't get to see as much as he'd like in any given year. Still, what he
does get to see he enjoys writing about, and hope people will stop by from
time to time to see what he has to say. He also thinks he's going to be a
pretty good foil for Tim Wick, fellow board member and with whom he often
disagrees on a film (ask Tim and Ish about Wild Wild West sometime).
He previously wrote about Bewitched
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