hree thousand years ago, the Scorpion King (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) failed in his quest to conquer the ancient world, and cut a deal with the dark god Anubis to win a second chance. The price: his immortal soul. In exchange, an army of jackal-headed Anubis warriors followed him and laid waste to Egypt.
Fast-forward to 1933. It's been nearly a decade since intrepid adventurer Rick O'Connell (Fraser) and his librarian-scholar wife, Evelyn (Weisz), defeated the undead Imhotep (Vosloo). Now, the amateur archaeologists are following Evelyn's visions to the underground vault holding a secret chest.
They are not alone. Their precocious eight-year-old son, Alex (Freddie Boath), can barely contain his enthusiasm for the expedition. But he is followed by three graverobbers employed by the treacherous Meela (Patricia Velasquez) and the nefarious curator of the British Museum (Alun Armstrong).
Evelyn discovers the chest, but unleashes a flood that nearly kills them both. Back home, Alex opens the chest and finds the wristband of the Scorpion King. Inadvertently attaching it to his wrist, Alex has visions of ancient Egypt.
Meela and the curator, meanwhile, have succeeded in resurrecting Imhotep--and he recognizes Meela as the reincarnation of his forbidden love, Anck-Su-Namun. The curator sees a chance to enlist Imhotep to raise the Scorpion King from death, defeat him and assume power over the Army of Anubis. A band of sword-wielding minions invades O'Connell Manor to seize the artifact, but encounters unexpected resistance from Evelyn, Rick, brother Jonathan (Hannah) and Egyptian warrior Ardeth Bay (Fehr).
Aided by Imhotep's resurrected mummy warriors, the bad guys give chase through London and kidnap Alex and the wristband. It falls to our heroes to pursue them back to Egypt and beyond to rescue the boy and stave off the apocalypse.
Sound and fury signifying little
The much-anticipated sequel to 1999's monster hit The Mummy reunites the entire cast and creative team of the original film. And with a much larger budget, the guiding principle seems to have been: bigger, louder, faster.
Where the original film featured a straightforward narrative of a treasure hunt that goes terribly wrong as the result of an ancient curse, the sequel layers mythology upon mythology to come up with a convoluted story involving curses, impending apocalypse, resurrection and reincarnation, a rescue mission and at least three epic battles.
All of which are basically beside the point, as the movie is really an excuse to unwrap the dazzling special effects in a Temple-of-Doom-like effort to top the delights of the first movie. If the first movie had swarms of bugs, the sequel has oceans of them--and tarantulas and scorpions too. If the first one had a sandstorm with Vosloo's face on it, the sequel has a massive cataract of water with Vosloo's face on it. The first had a platoon of mummies; the sequel, an army of thousands of jackal-headed warriors, thousands of Scorpion warriors, thousands of Medjai warriors. Car chases give way to ones involving a double-decker bus through London and a hot-air balloon over the Sahara.
And on and on and on. The Mummy Returns careens from one eye-popping action sequence to the next: floods, fire, girl-on-girl sword fights, boy-on-boy sword fights, rampaging pygmy skeletons (don't ask), vistas of not one, not two, but four separate ancient Egyptian cities, etc., etc.
The effect is mind-numbing, and after a while the viewer just shuts down completely and goes with the flow. It becomes difficult to tell the videogame-like computer animation from the real-life action, there's so much of it. The appealing actors and campy dialogue seem like necessary evils to connect the dots.
What's clear is that the filmmakers seem to be content to virtually abandon the first film's meager character development and shaggy charm in favor of bombast and spectacle.
