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Review:
 Don't get me wrong.
This film isn't as bad as I'm going to make it out to be. This is a
roller coaster movie, one jolt after another, and if you don't really
care about such things as plot, you're going to enjoy it immensely.
Unfortunately, there's the question of suspension of disbelief,
which is something which goes by the wayside almost immediately. In
the prologue, we learn that in the year 3046 BC, the Scorpion King (Dwayne"The
Rock" Johnson), conquered Egypt and then tried for the rest of the
world, but lost and then sold his soul to the evil god Anubus, who
helps him conquer the world before putting him in cold storage for the
better part of the Holocene geological epoch.
Now having Anubus show in person is fine. Having Egypt be a desert
is fine too, even though scientists know that it was a wet period and
the Sahara didn't exist at the time. Most people don't know that and
this IS fantasy after all. But then they've got the pyramids in the
background. That's it. The pyramids were almost a thousand years
later.I'm lost. The things that writer/director Stephen Sommers
ignores stick out like a sore thumb.
Cut to five thousand years later. It's 1933 and Rick O'Connell
(Brendan Fraser) and his lovely wife Evelyn(Rachel Weisz) are
excavating an ancient temple. Their 8-year-old genius son Alex(Freddie
Boath) is there too, when some baddies come to plunder the selfsame
temple.
While Alex holds them off at ground level, Rick and Evie discover the
bracelet of the Scorpion King, which will unleash Anubus' deathless
army and conquer the world. It seems that the baddies were hired by
resurrected pharaoh-ess Anck-su-namun(Patricia Velazques), who needs
it to help her boyfriend Im-Ho-Tep(Arnold Vosloo) take over the world
after she brings him back from the dead.
Cut to London...that is if you don't mind forgetting that Egypt has
customs inspectors...because that's where the O'Connells have brought
what might be the most important archeological find of the decade! Of
course, the baddies have managed to get across the border too, with
tons of machine guns and the like...but frankly, who cares. This is a
chase, and the kind that requires one to turn the higher functions of
the brain off and just enjoy the ride.
The jokes for the most part work. Kevin J. O'Connor is back as
Rick's sidekick Beni, John Hanna as his comic relief brother in law
Jonathan and Oded Fehr as the always-reliable mystical guard Ardeth
Bay and they're all in good form. So are Fraser and Weisz, but that
was expected.
The good people at Industrial light and Magic are the real stars of
this thing, once everybody gets back to Egypt, this is one nonstop
chase, and the last twenty minutes is a special effects extravaganza
that's not to be missed.
This is a summer popcorn film, after all. Enjoy it for what it is.
Eric Lurio |
