The Mummy Returns

Sometimes a sequel can be better than the original. Doubt it? Take a look at "The Mummy" - not 1932's lumbering black-and-white version, but the sleek version of two years ago. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz starred as daredevil ne'er-do-well Rick O'Connell and voluptuous Egyptologist Evie Carnahan, respectively, and unwittingly peeled the bandages off a horrible force that could have destroyed us all. It's perfectly fun, an adventure not unlike a Disneyland rollercoaster: familiar yet knowing, action-packed without excessive violence, professional as you please and above all scary but safe.

Now let's see what happens when you take the same sturdy plot, the same great cast and the same skilled writer/director, Stephen Sommers, and let them loose in a hugely lavish playground of computer-generated beasties and shimmering, imaginary vistas, give them new actors fighting for good and a massive human (wrestling's The Rock) cameoing for evil, and tell Sommers to let out all the stops on the action direction. The coaster goes higher, swoops lower, pins you harder to your seat on the turns, gets more mileage out of its jokes, and leaves you with an even bigger stupid-yet-satisfied grin on your face when you get off, legs wobbling, head swimming with exhiliration and a strange vicarious euphoria. That, ladies and gentlemen, is "The Mummy Returns."

The goals of "The Mummy Returns" are just as scorned by most filmmakers as they are cherished by audiences: to surprise without disgusting, to thrill without truly frightening, to amuse without malice. Like the old Indiana Jones flicks, "The Mummy Returns" and its predecessor revel in the absurdities of their ancestors. Every kiss between Fraser and Weisz portends some sort of calamity. Every silence is broken by a scream or an explosion. Every tomb is another portal from which someone unleashes an army of the undead which threatens to destroy the world. Every undead army must be combatted in some sort of dynamically violent (but non-gory) way by our heroes. And every character is in on the movie's machinations, seeing them and making jokes about them and taking them seriously all the same.

It's a difficult tonal maneuver to pull off, this combination of comic lightness and truly awesome kinetic action. Sommers succeeds brilliantly at it, as well as Steven Spielberg did in Indiana Jones, as well as anyone ever has. He knows just when to insert a joke to both undercut and heighten the absurdity of the plot. His sense of timing always serves the needs of the genre and rushes the pulses of the audience. He and his F/X team create fantastic worlds and hordes of vicious beasties with the computers, making pixels transform into living beings in a way that even George Lucas couldn't seem to do in "Star Wars Episode I." Most of all, though, Sommers palpably loved making this film. The love of fantasy, the allure of dreams, and the affection for the old films he gently tweaks are always evident, and fill every frame with an undeniable joy.

And Sommers is a truly outstanding action director, so outstanding that it's not a stretch to call him the John Woo of Egyptian-corpse-reanimation action. In both films, his characters have displayed a healthy appreciation for firearms, handheld weaponry and all the forms of unarmed combat in dispatching the undead, and they use all three with zest and determination here. But Sommers takes the extra step and makes his violence coherent. At no time does he slip the action into shadows or blurry visuals, thus obscuring the cool goings-on; we see it all clearly, and we see it from angles that are both visceral and logically sequenced. His use of slow-motion and stop-action should be studied by all lesser action filmmakers, as he makes these techniques serve the needs and desires of the audience - "Awesome! He's coming back up!" - and not some vague, careless, inept grasping at artistry. And he keeps it clean, free of pointless gore and guts, to the point where mere flesh wounds strike even a jaded viewer as grave injuries.

Sommers also draws some truly enthusiastic performances from his cast. One cannot fault the alternating grim levity and grim determination of Brendan Fraser, pumped, armed to the teeth and ready to roll once again as Rick, or the dark, fiery eyes and (ahem) luxuriant cleavage of Rachel Weisz as Evie O'Connell. Yep, they're married now, and they even have a genre-appropriate son, played by Freddie Boath, who manages to avoid being annoying even when being inordinately spunky. Arnold Vosloo, returning as reanimated bandage boy Im-Ho-Tep, once again must take a back seat to viciously beautiful Patricia Velasquez, playing Im-Ho-Tep's once and future love, Anck-Su-Naman. And while the Rock is cooking more of an hors d'oevure than a main course here, rest assured that a prequel featuring his nearly invincible, awe-inspiring Scorpion King in more detail is on the way - written and directed, cheeringly, by Sommers.

"The Mummy Returns" will not be confused with great art any time soon. Its plot is neither plausible nor coherent, it lacks real characters, and it has nothing much to say other than "Let's have some fun." But "The Mummy Returns" uses a considerable amount of artistry to make everyone have that fun. Sommers has disinterred a genre and used his directorial magic to make it do his bidding - not to destroy the world, but to entertain it. As pure cinemagoing pleasure, you are not likely to find anything to surpass it soon.

Okay, I was way, way, way more positive about this film than any other review I read at all in any publication by even the most retarded film critics in the land. It sounds like I went on the junket and hit the whirlpool with Patricia Velasquez. But I really, really did like this film that much when I saw it. Even now, I remember fondly everything I liked about it the first time I saw it. So it wasn't a passing fancy like the fancy for "3000 Miles to Graceland" or "Zoolander." The point? I'll stand on my own stupidity if I can't be smart, and this movie took away all the latent desire to comment cynically on its failings that I might have had. It's hella fun.

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