Mummy but no Big Daddy

''I hate mummies. They never play fair.''

In the Far East, trouble-seeking father-and-son duo Rick and Alex O'Connell unearth the mummy of the first Emperor of Qin -- a shape-shifting entity who was cursed by a sorceress centuries ago.

Brendan Fraser: Rick O'Connell

Where's Stephen Sommers gone? Rob Cohen isn't the wisest replacements at this franchises third installment's helm.

The previous Mummy's may have suffered from Sommers penchant for OTT characters, tireless action sequences and decidedly diluted CG use, but at least they resulted in huge amounts of fun.
Brendan Fraser's Rick O'Connell, action hero, poked fun at ridiculously overblown macho-ism while being smug.

Sadly on Mummy 3 Sommers is merely a producer on this belated addition to the franchise. Parachuted into his place is Rob Cohen, director of the dire Stealth, and while he tries in vain to keep things aired, ultimately Cohen's Mummy movie is a cold and lifeless husk.

The Mummy movies have always compared to the Indy series.
Bored, missing the adventure of the past, Rick like Indy is in the process of coming to terms with his own mortality. But this thread is dropped just minutes in when Rick and Evie (Maria Bello, replacing Rachel Weisz, yes I can't get over that flaw and I gasped in the cinema, plus her accent is awful!) recant their retirement and head to Shanghai, where their son Alex (Luke Ford), and Evie's brother Jonathan (John Hannah, stranded as the laughs and main attraction), are placed. And then Li's Emperor is awakened and all hell is unleashed.

Well, waddles loose might be more accurate. There are decent ideas in play,a chase through the streets of Shanghai is enjoyably frenetic and a battle between Han's terracotta army and thousands of zombie soldiers showcases above-average effects. But too often than not the pacing is one sided and hampered by Cohen's decision to shoot much of the action with a Bourne-esque shaky-cam. For a franchise as determinedly old- fashioned as this, it's a bad idea. As for the big fights, they're a complete overblown downer, the much hyped skirmish between Li and Yeoh is over in a flash.

Most of the film's problems begin with the script, by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, riddled with clunky exposition, wafer-thin characters and plot developments that should be a light, pulpy fun, but which instead feel cold and devoid of real aspirations.
The appearance of am allied group of Yetis about halfway through, is just another example of how I cannot take this film seriously. What is it trying to be? Fantasy? History? Myth? It ends up being a cloudy haze of a mess.

Far more disastrous, though, is the decision to shift most of the focus from Fraser onto Ford as Alex, Rick and Evie's son, presumably with one eye on future sequels. Notwithstanding the fact that Fraser looks like he could be Ford's older sibling, the newcomer is lacking emotion, which he may bring a certain physicality to the role, but cannot compete with Rick's carefree charm.

Although Fraser's O'Connell here is a poor husk of the cocky hero who fired up the first Mummy. The one liners are tired and worn out, the heroics forced and routine. And for a series that may be named after its mystical villain but derived its soul and stamina from its hero, that's a void that remains tragically empty.

One good thing remains is the Lynn & Alex which was a private joke at the cinema and really took me by surprise. Mummy 3 isn't too bad but isn't great either like its two predecessors were. I miss Rachel Weisz.

2/10