THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR

THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR
Rated:PG-13

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It’s best to go into The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor not expecting too much. A movie this affable, entertaining and harmless is ruined by questioning its logic or scoffing at the mystic hogwash that sets its events into motion. If you’re willing to accept its flights of fancy and leaps of logic—and, fair warning, it involves yetis with hearts of gold—the third installment of the Mummy franchise is a pleasant enough summer adventure with its heart more or less in the right place.

Like the first two films, Dragon Emperor opens in the ancient past, as a narrator somberly intones about the evil Emperor (Jet Li), who learned to command the natural elements and wanted to take over the world. He enlists the help of a witch (Michelle Yeoh) to make himself immortal, but she curses him instead when the Emperor executes the witch’s one true love, freezing the Emperor and his army as terra cotta statues for millennia.

Until 1946, when Alex O’Connell (Luke Ford), all grown up since the last film, digs up the Emperor’s tomb, an unwitting accomplice to scowling Chinese soldiers who want to enlist the Emperor’s help in world domination. The final element of their plot is nabbing Alex’s parents, Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn (Maria Bello, stepping in for Rachel Weisz), who travel to China unknowingly carrying the one thing needed to revive the Emperor. Following a chase through the streets of Shanghai that is literally explosive thanks to some fireworks, the family is joined by Evelyn’s brother Jonathan (John Hannah) and a mysterious young Chinese woman (Isabella Leong) on a journey to stop the Emperor before he can truly become immortal and take power once again.

Their journey takes them to a temple in the middle of the Himalayas—yes, that’s where the yetis come in—and eventually to Shangri-La, where the Emperor hopes to bathe in the pool of immortality. All the location-hopping, of course, is an excuse for both elaborate set-piece fight scenes (some more successful than others) and family bonding (almost entirely worthless), which give the actors time to toss off witty quips while firing guns at the approaching baddies.

As the revived Emperor, with a body made of clay until he spontaneously combusts to reveal melted flesh, Jet Li is imposing but overshadowed by the CGI that masks him. Neither he nor Yeoh (you didn’t think she’d disappear after the prologue, did you?) are given enough opportunity to show off the martial-arts skills that have made them famous, and their short fight is edited so poorly they may as well have stunt doubles. It’s really a shame that Rick and Evelyn are the main characters, since all they do is shoot guns at anything that moves. Director Rob Cohen, replacing Stephen Sommers from the first two films, succumbs to the quick-cutting impulse that is intended to make fight scenes dynamic, but instead renders them incoherent. Luckily, he’s better handling the ridiculous dialogue, allowing the charm of his actors to make most of it sound somewhat reasonable.

There are way too many plot holes in Dragon Emperor, most notably why an all-powerful witch would put a curse on an evil emperor that can be reversed with little effort. Some of the jokes fall flat—particularly one involving yak vomit—and the jovial comedy seems to often be aiming for kids who would rather see the next skeleton battle. But it’s hard to argue with a movie that refuses to take itself too seriously, and aims for the kind of easy, old-fashioned adventure that the latest Indiana Jones adventure didn’t quite manage. Not that Dragon Emperor really manages it either, but this late in the summer, it’s hard to muster those kinds of high expectations.

Critic: Katey Rich