Film Review: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

Grade: C-

There are movies like The Mummy 1 and 2 and the National Treasure series that are so dumb you start to enjoy them. The more ludicrous the plot, the better. Bask me in your corny lines and predictable endings, just take me along on an adventure ride through an imaginary real world Disney asked us to dream.

And then there is The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which is actually dumber, cornier, and more predictable than any of the predecessors. But there's no sense of excitement, no laugh-out-loud or wow moments to cloud the terrible film you're watching. Just don't go blaming Brendan Frasier though. He seems to have a knack and a curse for using terrible material and running with it -- carrying the likes of Blast from the Past and Bedazzled with his broad shoulders. He could not save George of the Jungle. No one is that good.

Sure the absence of Rachel Weisz from this film hurt and newcomer Luke Ford as Frasier's son doesn't help at all. Probably the greatest flaw was a guy who's last few films included XXX, Stealth, and The Fast and The Furious -- all films capable of making you hurl.

Explorer Rick O'Connel and his wife are back from an uneasy retirement, only to find themselves saving the rogue like-father-like-son Alex in China. With the help of money-hungry backstabbers, the O'Connels find themselves in the middle of an ancient Chinese emperor with mystic powers awakening (Jet Li). Now the race is off before he awakes his army. In essence, the script has the same skeleton as Hellboy II, except Guillermo Del Toro's fantasy world is replaced with story ideas and special effects that should have been left for dead.

There's a scene when the heroes have no way of fighting the dragon emperor, and to their rescue comes abominable snowmen. To which everyone in the audience and Brandon Frasier scream out, "ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN!?!!?!?!?" That was the greatest part of the movie, when Frasier said the same thing everyone else was thinking -- maybe at that point, he was telling us that everyone involved in the picture knew how bad this film is going to be.

Maybe it's a film that had to be done -- just to satisfy the What Ifs of a popular movie franchise. This stamps The Mummy series as dead, to be left in the coffin and never to be resurrected again. And for that, I'm thankful at least.