“The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” – Rachel Weisz was right; the script sucked.

Holy shit, was this film a disaster. I had my reservations going into it, but I didn’t think it would suck so badly. Imagine drinking toilet water and you’ll have an idea of the quality of the latest Mummy installment. Before seeing this movie, there were two things I knew based on the previews. One was that the dragon emperor would be transforming into a dragon at some point and the other was that Rachel Weisz was not in the film. The latter was a disappointment to me as she is my favorite actress. As it turns out, I’m glad she doesn’t have this crappy film attached to her resume.

At this point, I would normally begin a summary of the movie, but this film was so dumb that it’s barely worth it. That’s why Weisz refused to be a part of it. At first, she wanted to do it, but after reading the script, she refused. The studio tried to spin her refusal by saying she didn’t want to be away from her family for five months, but we all know that’s a bunch of bullshit. I’m not sure why Maria Bello felt differently, but she took over Weisz’s role as Evelyn O’Connor.

Well, here’s the plot in a nutshell. Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn have retired. It’s important for you to know that it’s 1947, fourteen years after the events of “The Mummy Returns.” Their son, Alex (Luke Ford), is digging up the tomb of the 2,000 year-old dragon emperor (Jet Li). Some bad Chinese guys want to resurrect the dragon emperor to reconquer China and take over the world. Some good Chinese gals have been preventing that from happening since the emperor was originally cursed. The rest is about what you would guess.

From this summary, you probably don’t think it’s as bad as I am making it out to be. Let me clear this up for you. For some reason, this emperor has control of the five elements. Yes, five; earth, fire, water, wind, and metal. Stop laughing. I’m not making this up. The emperor and his army were originally cursed and turned into Terra Cotta by Zi Yuan (Michelle Yeoh) because the emperor ripped her boyfriend apart by horses. I’m still not making this up. They get into numerous battles with the emperor, but he always stops short of killing them when he has a chance. I know this is standard movie procedure, but this was just ridiculous. In one scene, the emperor tries to kill them by raising deadly icicles from the ground. Not two minutes later, he has the chance to do it again, but instead just makes ice to cause Rick to slide away. He also uses his power of scream (are you laughing now?) to scare some abominable snowmen away. The guy has control of fire! Why doesn’t he just engulf them all in flames? The movie is filled with this nonsense, but I won’t bore you with more of it.

The dumbest part of the plot is that the emperor’s army can only become immortal by crossing the Great Wall. I’ll say it for you…bwaa? There is no explanation for this and I won’t try to guess. We don’t know why this is important, since the emperor is already immortal (he drank more magical water), has control of the elements, and can transform himself into anything he wants. Instead of turning back into the three-headed dragon and destroying everyone, he turns into some sort of semi-large beast and runs to his throne room. This guy is an idiot. Need further proof? In the final battle, Rick yells about honor to get the emperor to fight as a man. Let’s remember that this is the same emperor that tore his general to pieces with horses. He would not care about fighting with honor. He would just kill him. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Enough with the plot though. The acting was pretty much a disgrace as well. Luke Ford was about as convincing an actor as a footstool acting as a house. Maria Bello wasn’t much better either. She’s not Rachel Weisz, so why bother having her fake an English accent when she has a completely different face? Somebody should punch Rob Cohen (the director) in the balls for that. Repeatedly. Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised since he is the same person who gave us such sewage as “Stealth” and “XXX.” I can feel you nodding in understanding now. Yeoh, Li, and Fraser were all substandard as well, but not nearly at the same level of crap as Ford and Bello. As an added bonus, the dialogue was as crappy as Ford, so none of them had a chance of even making the best of it. At one point, Rick and Alex are comparing penises, I mean…guns. Dr. Freud would be proud.

The special effects were as bad as the script, so I’m left wondering how they managed to spend $140 million making this film. When the emperor first turns into clay, it looks like he is being covered in a chocolate fountain, with chocolate spewing from his mouth. When he is defeated, the same thing happens, except with a fiery glow to it. Besides that, the fight scene at the end was like being in the middle of a tornado. Maybe these guys don’t understand that we’re supposed to watch movies where we can actually see the actors. Plus, the avalanche effects were terrible, the abominable snowmen were badly rendered, and Shangri-La was just lame. We are also treated to one of the abominables giving the touchdown signal when his buddy boots a bad guy (in the balls no less), as well as a yak barfing into a barf bag on a plane flight (get it, yak? Har har). I’m sure they’ll recover the cost; this movie is doing well at the box-office.

What we’re left with is a shitty movie that we won’t want to watch again, which is unfortunate, since that is what made the first “Mummy” decent. I wasn’t a big fan of “The Mummy” at first, but it’s one of those movies that gets better every time you watch it (we have TNT and TBS to thank for showing it roughly 217,000 times). That won’t be Mummy 3 though. It doesn’t stand a chance without Weisz.

Rating: Ask for all of your money back. You shouldn’t have to pay to see a yak puking.