The Mummy Returns

by CHRISTOPHER TOOKEY, Daily Mail

Depth! Seriousness! Great acting! Plausible plotting! A responsible approach to ancient history! All this and more is utterly absent from this week's big release. But what do you expect from a movie called The Mummy Returns?

Thrills and fun, I'd say - and this is one sequel that delivers.

It is bigger, faster, louder and even sillier than the 1999 original. The plot makes a kind of sense, but it's really an excuse for a helter-skelter collection of great action sequences, cobbled together with a Spielbergian zest for hokum by writer-director Stephen Sommers.

This is, in everything but name and personnel, Indiana Jones IV.

The year is 1933. Eight years on from the first movie, former jailbird and legionnaire Rick (Brendan Fraser) and librarian Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) have a precocious eight-year-old son called Alex (Freddie Boath).

They have clearly made piles of money at something, for they live in an immaculate stately home and don't look a day older. Maybe they're into pyramid selling.

The ever-amiable and distinctly talented Brendan Fraser manages a convincing world-weariness as he is set upon by ferocious Arab tribesmen and homicidal mummies in the bowels of the British Museum ('Not these guys again!') then pursued through London in a double-decker bus by a quartet of deranged skeletons. And that's just the first 20 minutes.

The original Mummy Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) does return as advertised, along with his old flame Anck-Su-Namun (played by the splendidly curvaceous Venezuelan supermodel Patricia Velasquez).

There is a formidable array of new villains, from a dodgy museum curator improbably bent on world domination (Alun Armstrong, slumming in style) through to the non-speaking, all-fighting Scorpion King (World Wrestling Federation star Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson), to say nothing of several hundred thousand computer-generated Anubian jackals.

The underlying philosophy of the movie is encapsulated in one exchange of dialogue between Weisz and Fraser.

'Honey,' she scolds him after he's blown away some new threat from the ancient world of the undead, 'you are not a subtle man!'

'We don't have time for subtle,' he remarks. Neither does Sommers. There are various needlessly vulgar touches, such as an anachronistic, sub-Eddie Murphy sidekick all too obviously calculated to appeal to an urban black audience.

John Hannah is, I'm afraid, back as Weisz's cowardly, playboy brother, to provide supposedly comic relief delivered in an inexplicably Scottish accent.

Rachel Weisz looks lovely running round the desert in a succession of entertainingly impractical low-cut tops, though I can't say I was fully convinced by her incarnation elsewhere in the movie as the ass-kicking, martial arts expert of ancient Egypt, Princess Nefertiri.

That groaning sound you may hear may not be Imhotep rising from his sarcophagus - it's probably Ancient Egyptian scholars turning in their graves.

But there are plenty of bright touches. The stunts and most of the special-effects are better than in the original, and I particularly enjoyed the film's most innovative feature - bad-tempered pygmy skeletons with blowdarts.

They are an entertaining cross between the Teddy bears in Return Of The Jedi and the nasty little creatures in Gremlins: Ewoks with attitude.

There are, if this kind of thing bothers you, fewer anti-Arab stereotypes. Oded Fehr returns as Ardeth Bay, the Omar Sharif-like leader of the Medjai, a benevolent desert brotherhood of Arab warriors dressed in black, which must make them awfully hot when the sun's out.

Though allegedly secret, they seem able to assemble in their thousands at a moment's notice, like an armed and deadly band of soccer referees.

It's a time-honoured critical tradition to knock this kind of film, but making such frankly derivative hokum look fresh and exciting takes a great deal of determination, craftsmanship and talent.

Though this certain hit will make hundreds of millions for Hollywood, British skills are at the heart of its success.

Much of the film was shot at Shepperton Studios, and the work of our own Alan Cameron (production design), John Bloomfield (costumes), Adrian Biddle (photography) and Neil Corbould (specialeffects) is first-rate throughout. Sommers has pinched most of his ideas, but he's stolen from the best - E.T., Lawrence Of Arabia and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The film is a dazzling feat of directorial organisation, and little flashes of humanity prevent it from being a completely soulless blockbuster.

He even manages one moment of genuine pathos towards the end - when Imhotep is betrayed by his ancient girlfriend.

My son would adore this movie, and I can't believe that it would do him - or any other ten-year-old - any harm.

I expect he and his chums will see the movie anyway, on video or DVD, thus bringing our system of film classification into further disrepute.

The Mummy Returns should surely have been given a PG certificate. In the meantime, anyone of 12 years or upwards can enjoy it in the cinema.

You can look forward to the third movie in this series coming out some time next year - as, indeed, shall I.

Click below to read more reviews of this film:

{"status":"error","code":"499","payload":"Asset id not found: readcomments comments with assetId=47250, assetTypeId=1"}