I want my "Mummy"!

It’s been nearly a decade since Universal Pictures and writer/director Stephen Sommers nominally revived the studio’s ancient Mummy character. The product of this resuscitation was 1999’s “The Mummy,” which had a whole lot more to do with the Indiana Jones series than it did with the 1932 Boris Karloff vehicle. 

While the back story was transferred relatively intact, the body of the 1932 plot was ignored in favor of a “Raiders”-esque adventure, with Brendan Fraser a surprisingly good stand-in for Harrison Ford. Fraser and the rest of the cast returned along with the title corpse in “The Mummy Returns” (2001), which engendered a spinoff, “The Scorpion King” (2002), highlighting the Rock’s character.

With that, one might have assumed that the tales of Im-Ho-Tep had come to an end. And, despite his character’s presence in the title, Im-Ho-Tep does not figure into “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” the first part of which really should have read “The Sort-of-Mummy-Type-Undead-Guy-But-Chinese-Not-Egyptian.” In-My-Humble-Opinion-Tep has been supplanted by Qin Shi Huang (Jet Li), the first emperor of China (the same dude Li was trying to assassinate in Zhang Yimou’s “Hero”). The emperor kills top general Ming (Russell Wong) for dallying with the beautiful enchantress Zi Yuan (real-life beautiful enchantress Michelle Yeoh); since the emperor is immortal, she curses him to be frozen into a terra cotta figure, along with his soldiers.
This Sino-fied version of the earlier Mummy story is explained in a plodding ten-minute pre-title sequence that feels more like an hour. When it finally ends, we find hero Rick O’Connell (Fraser) living in boring bliss with wife Evy (Maria Bello, replacing Rachel Weisz), ca. 1946. They get offered a Chinese adventure, which they leap at — not knowing that their wayward son Alex (Luke Ford) is already there, having discovered the ancient emperor’s tomb. Soon Rick, Evy, Alex and Evy’s brother Jonathan (John Hannah, another returnee) are desperately chasing all over China, trying to prevent the emperor, whom they have accidentally brought back to life, from leaping the series of fairy-tale hurdles that will allow him to take over the world. Yawn: Been there, done that.

The 1999 film survived largely on the comedy and the romantic interaction between Rick and Evy. Neither aspect is present here. The O’Connells are, quite frankly, a bickering drag; and Rick’s personality has grown leaden with age and respectability.

These changes are presumably a prelude to Universal spinning off a new series, with the younger, less expensive Luke Ford taking over from Fraser. Don’t count on it. In his first big Hollywood production, Ford is a complete zero: He’s not merely uncharismatic, he’s practically impossible to remember from scene to scene.

Likewise, Bello is a big letdown. Her character is not only nothing like the Evy played by Weisz; she’s downright irritating. Bello has done good work elsewhere — in fact, terrific work in David Cronenberg’s “A History of Violence” — so the blame may lie at the feet of director Rob Cohen (“XXX,” “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story”).
It’s always great to see Yeoh on screen, and “The Mummy: TOTDE” also uses (if not especially interestingly) Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, one of the greatest current Hong Kong actors (“Hard Boiled,” “Exiled,” “Infernal Affairs”).

But the script frankly sucks. It lifts from sources that were themselves tired liftings from other sources. The funniest lines don’t appear to have been intended to be funny. (In mid-crisis, Alex apologizes to his folks: “I’m sorry I blamed you guys for raising the emperor.”) The action sequences are flat and unexciting, and the behavior of the CGI Yetis briefly slides into “Airplane!”-level reality.

In general, the CGI makes you long for the days of Ray Harryhausen, a comparison that becomes unavoidable when Cohen dredges up an army of skeletons. And, while I’m sure no one cares except me, having an apparently well-educated character refer to his allotted “four score years and ten” makes me suspect that my alumnus brother Cohen paid even less attention in college than I did.