Now Showing
Candid Reviews of Movies Just
Hitting The Big Screen
by Cole Smithey
The Mummy Returns
By definition sequels are generally doomed to an inferior status to their original predecessor. In the case of writer/director Stephen Sommers’ return to the scene of his criminally silly yet hugely popular
The Mummy (1999), there is no cause for surprise that his follow-up is a computer generated stinker of a dud. Once again the 3000 year-old ‘Imhotep’ (Mr. Mummy) gets his skin back, in the guise of actor Arnold Vosloo, to attempt an Egyptian power play that will bring down a circa 1933 apocalypse of destruction. This drama is made possible by some archaeological pilfering by Egyptologist Evelyn O’Connell (Rachel Weisz), her dim-witted playboy brother Jonathan (John Hannah), her swashbuckling hubby Rick (Brendan Fraser) and the couple’s 8 year-old son Alex (Freddie Booth). There’s a lump of
E.T., a dash of Star Wars, a spritz of Lawrence of
Arabia, a dose of Indiana Jones and not a trace of the horrific elements that made the 1932 original version of
The Mummy (with Boris Karloff) an achievement in horror.
After uncovering a tomb-enclosed Pandora’s box containing a cursed scorpion bracelet, our fab four (Evelyn, Rick, Alex, and Jonathan) are confronted by a snake toting, sword-wielding troop of silk clad villains looking to reclaim the bracelet. Little do they know that little Alex has the gold talisman stuck on his small wrist. For all the extraordinary power s that the bracelet supposedly has, we never get the pleasure of seeing Alex tap into the authority at his disposal. Instead the movie slips into a chase fest, as the adults travel from London (with mummies on their backs) to Karnak to recover their kidnapped Alex.
A special effects blitz kicks off the opening scene of The Mummy Returns with thousands of devil dog warriors rampaging over Egyptian sand. The exposition is set in 3067 B.C. and introduces the diabolical handiwork of the Scorpion King (played by Worldwide Wrestling Federation hero ‘The Rock’). Scorpion King makes a desperately hammy pact with the god Anubis that provides him a military victory with an army of dog-monster soldiers, who we discover, still exist in a soon-to-be unfrozen state of animation. The only thing worse than the Rock’s insufferable acting ability is the phony looking half-man, half-giant scorpion monster that the special effects team at Industrial Light and Magic fell down on the job on. It looks like they borrowed a head from a wax museum and had a good laugh guessing whether or not they’d be caught.
It’s not long before brittle boned CGI mummies are being shot to pieces as they attack our heroes in quirky locales, like on an old double-decker bus racing around London streets while Imhotep conspires with his ancient girlfriend Anck-Su-Mamun (Patricia Velasquez). One the film’s most elementary mistakes is Sommers’ repeated version of mummies, and Imhotep in specific. These mummies aren’t covered in unraveling gauze, but rather exposed gray figures that seem more vulnerable than intimidating, more like objects than supernatural throwbacks to the humans they once were. Because we’re allowed to see Imhotep as a bald guy walking around trying to get busy with his hot body girlfriend, there’s no mystery, no fear, and no chance for an audience to put its imagination to use.
Obviously, The Mummy Returns is a movie geared toward young boys who love big bold action movies told in the broadest strokes possible. And for that predictable audience, the movie fulfills its entertainment goals with dazzling special effects, vapid dialogue, and a cookie-cutter plot that will leave most adults feeling as hollow the film’s cartoon pop-up characters. Rachel Weisz puts on a sexy wink-and-tell quality to her librarian character this time around, and engages in an acrobatic martial arts battle with Patricia Velasquez that momentarily shifts the movie into a well-choreographed fight scene like something out of
Crouching Tiger.
The only reason to see The Mummy Returns is to satisfy your 8 to 12 year-old son or nephew, who couldn’t get in to see the “PG-13” rated movie on his own. Of course he may become envious that he doesn’t have Rachel Weisz as his own mom.
One Night At McCool’s
Michael Douglas’ production company Furthur Films trots out debut director Harald Zwart with a predictable dark comedy centered around three men’s recollections of disastrous events caused by their meeting the same woman at a bar called McCool’s. Liv Tyler plays Jewel, a materialist sex bunny with a penchant for theft and manipulating men. If it weren’t for the film’s canny casting choices of Matt Dillon, Paul Reiser, and John Godman, the movie’s already lacking entertainment value would be less than zero. There’s just enough senseless death, lacking morals, and bad hair-dos to condemn this movie as a Tarrantino knock-off too many.
Randy (Matt Dillon) a messy bachelor bartender, Carl (Paul Reiser) a kinky but rich married lawyer, and detective Dehling (John Goodman) a pious cop, are men with very little common sense to go with their hyper libidos. We know this because each one falls hopelessly in love with Jewel in the face of very bad signals she gives off like an out-of-control stop light. Randy meets Jewel when she escapes from the clutches an evil dude in a brown Camero outside of McCool’s bar just as Randy is closing up to go home. Little does Randy know that Jewel was already putting the moves on his distant cousin Carl inside the bar. Randy comes to Jewel’s rescue to have her invite herself over to his ill-furnished house for some wild sex before her partner in crime Utah (the dude in the brown Camaro) joins in to rob Randy of all he’s worth.
The second act picks up after Jewel shoots Utah as he waits for Randy to empty the safe. Detective Dehling isn’t son much interested in solving the case as he is in displacing Jewel from Randy’s house where she now lives. While Jewel goes about setting up her little dream cottage in Randy’s house with items she provokes him to steal, another corpse appears at Jewel’s unsteady hand. Randy begins to seek revenge against Jewel just as Carl and detective Dehling converge on Jewel for her affection.
The movie is dedicated to its screenwriter Stan Seidel, a television writer (Fox Networks “True Colors,” and ABC’s “Where I Live”) who passed away at age 48.
One Night at McCool’s is the first of Seidel’s three screenplays to be produced.
Although the movie carries a comic foundation in Seidel’s hometown of St. Louis Missouri, there isn’t enough of a synergy between the three main male characters for their troubles with the female object of their desire to reveal much about them as characters, much less people an audience would care much about. Randy carries the narrative weight as the story’s protagonist, but never goes beyond the luckless bartender that we meet at the beginning of the movie.
Michael Douglas does an enjoyable comic turn as a bingo playing hitman with an Elvis coiffure that shouts ‘wig’ so loud his low rent character seems to duck beneath the roar. Paul Reiser shamelessly takes the brunt of the film’s humor as he prances around for the last part of the movie dressed in leather and chains S&M gear. There’s no question that Liv Tyler isn’t attractive and churlish enough to drive
McCool’s’ bored male characters to the ends of sanity that they go to, it’s more a matter of how many more half-baked
Pulp Fictions will be pawned off at the box office.
|
147x50.gif)