The Mummy : Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

AKA : "Mummy Three"

Genre : Campy Action

Time : 112 minutes

Year : 2008

Overall Rating : C

. Mummy-3 switches the setting from Egypt to China; adds Chinese megastar Jet Li to the line-up and replaces Rachel Weisz with Maria Bello as Evy. Rick and Evy have to come to the rescue of their now-grown son, who has accidentally revived the evil emperor Han. . Alas, it has to follow the first two masterpieces, and frankly falls flat. There's no chemistry among our family of heroes, Jet Li is woefully under-used, there's no depth at all to any of the Chinese characters; and you're gonna hate the new Evy. . What's To Like... That being said, there's still lots of action, including some butt-kicking Yetis. The computer-generated armies look good, and the Chinese characters speak honest-to-goodness Mandarin. Very little of which I understand anymore. Evy's brother, played by John Hannah is the saving grace, delivering some great comic scenes. The terra cotta army motif is nicely done. .

Survey Says : Put Mummy to bed.

Mummy-3 got raked over the coals at Amazon.com. I can't remember any other movie where the one-star ratings outnumbered each of the other options. Wow.

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It really isn't that bad, but it doesn't merit anything above a "C", as in "meh". And to think I could've watched Iron Man instead of this.

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The ending keeps the door open for a Mummy-4 set in Peru. Sadly, here's hoping they choose not to do that, and let the series die. Hey, two out of three ain't bad.