The second Mummy sequel isn’t going to win any Academy Awards in the writing department, that much becomes almost immediately clear. It’s been years since I’ve seen either of the other preceding films, although that doesn’t matter so much. The third installment in the Mummy franchise starts out with an extensive back story of the Chinese Emperor Qin (pronounced “cheen”), the “dragon emperor,” and how he came to be fossilized along with thousands of his soldiers. Obviously, wild liberties are taken with the story in order to turn it into a Hollywood film, although for an introduction into a half-assed movie, it’s not a bad dramatization.

Our friends Rick and Evelyn, now married (and now Maria Bello), have retired from the action adventure life and are trying to be boring middle aged parents in the English countryside, until they find themselves faced with the opportunity to deliver a priceless artifact to China, where their son Alex is secretly excavating an ancient Tomb. Soon, of course, the Tomb turns out to be cursed and the artifact that they are delivering turns out to be more than meets the eye.

It seems that the despotic Dragon Emperor has been awoken and now wants to come back and turn China into a unified nation under his rule. China was in the middle of a civil war at that time, between the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Tse-tung. There had been widespread battling between warlords throughout China since the Mongols were overthrown in 1911, so the nation was in bad need of order.

Of course, the Dragon Emperor had no intention of creating a benevolent government, he planned a vicious, brutal dictatorship where freedom was a myth. Of course, in reality, less than two years after the movie takes place, Chairman Mao took over, proclaimed the foundation of the People’s Republic of China with himself as Emperor, and began his vicious, brutal dictatorship where freedom was a myth. Ouch!

The movie puts all of it’s stock into it’s special effect and climactic battle sequences, but unfortunately the special effects, like in the two movies before it, are interesting but not convincing for a second, and the battle sequences are exactly the same thing we’ve seen dozens of times before. Even the army of the dead has been done before, and using far more primitive but much more effective cinematic trickery, in Army of Darkness, a much better movie than this one.

Unfortunately, Jet Li turns out to be nothing more than a marketing ploy for the movie, since he literally only appears in it for a few minutes. The vast majority of his screen time is as a special effect, a bizarre living statue that occasionally hurls pieces of his regenerating face in anger and talks through a throat full of gravel. At one point he morphs into a three-headed dragon and, while the morphing is not unimpressive, Jet Li fans are sure to be disappointed that they have to spend the entire movie waiting for him to show up.

Just in case you forgot for a minute that this is an American movie, some CGI yeti show up late in the movie (to which O-Conell responds, “Aboninable snowmen?!” Yeah I had the same response, just with more question marks) and turn into stupid, stupid comic relief. They literally act exactly like frat boys, kicking bad guys through field goals and puking and whatnot. What a joke.

There are several movies this summer that have been more impressive than I expected, but sadly The Mummy 3 is just not one of them. GI suggest going to see Pineapple Express instead…

This is me kicking it with the real Dragon Emperor back in May '07. We go way back.

Oh and just so you all know, I auditioned for a role in the movie but they said I didn't look Chinese enough. Sometimes I just don't get those people.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (2008)

Action/Adventure/Family/Science Fiction/Fantasy, PG, 92 mins.

***1/2 out of *****.

Erik Brevig, an experienced visual effects artist, makes his feature film directing debut with this update of Jules Verne’s classic sci-fi novel about a group of people making an effort to reach the center of the earth to further mankind’s scientific knowledge. Screenwriter Michael Weiss boasts an impressive list of crappy movies, including direct-to-video features like Octopus , Crocodile, U.S. Seals II (a sequel to a rip-off…), Octopus 2: River of Fear and, get this, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. Good thing I researched all this after I saw the movie, otherwise I probably would have skipped it.

This is, however, the best version of the novel that has ever been made for the screen. I’ve seen most of the other film adaptations of the story, so I had low expectations but high hopes, since so much had been left undone as far as putting Verne’s actual story on the screen.

While the previous films took wild liberties with the source, this one takes a completely different approach, it literally presents itself as though Jules Verne wrote the novel based on a true expedition. Professor Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser), carries a copy of the novel through the movie with him as sort of a map to guide him, his nephew Sean, and their hottie Icelandic mountain guide Hannah through the dangers that they encounter on their journey through the earth’s crust.

In an effort to prove the potential truth of his long-missing brother’s research and theories (and to get along with his smart-ass nephew), Anderson sets off on this quest to penetrate the earth’s crust through a volcano in Iceland. What follows is a remarkably faithful presentation of Verne’s story, which doesn’t really matter because most people will be more interested in the 3D anyway.

And the 3D is impressive, by the way. We have come a long way since those red and blue sunglasses that just made everything look red and blue, the 3D here is so realistic that the obligatory jump-through-the-screen moments may cause even the most judicious of us to raise our eyebrows. Sadly, that realism is the new novelty, so the movie can’t help halting in its tracks every ten minutes or so for a nice 3D wow-moment. I hate that.

It should be noted that this is a family film, so don’t expect high adventure or danger the likes of which you should expect to find on a journey anywhere where no one has ever been before. As a guide, I have developed a theory that, in a movie like this, the character who doesn’t know anything (Sean, the nephew), is about the age of the target audience, because he is the one that needs to have everything explained to him, for the audience’s benefit. Sean is 13.

Professor Anderson wishing that Jules Verne had written a shorter book.

There is, however, an immediate and crippling discrepancy with the story. Before anything happens resembling any journey anywhere, we get a Toyota Prius commercial, a PSP commercial, plugs for Mountain Dew, Tivo, Family Guy, and Iceland Airlines, and the strange revelations that a PSP can “Google at 30,000 feet” and a punk teenager can receive calls on his cell phone while trapped miles below the earth’s surface. That’s news to me!

The problem is that the story of a journey, as Anderson describes it, through the earth’s crust and into the mantle, requires a fundamental lack of modern scientific knowledge. So it follows that in a society that has commercial airlines, hybrid vehicles, portable video game devices that can search the internet at cruising altitude, cell phones that work anywhere on or in the planet, and modern computers, should also understand that a journey to the “center of the earth” is, as they say, an exercise in futility.

See? Your standard eighth grade Earth Science book knows what it looks like in there!

Nonetheless, this could be a great way to spend some time with the kids this weekend and, although there is one emotional moment and one romantic moment in the movie and both fall completely flat, it’s not the worst date movie I’ve ever seen. There are some clever and amusing scenes (”We’re STILL falling!”) but also plenty of cheeseball dialogue and half-assed performances (Fraser’s quivering lip is just too much…), but despite the roller coaster ride lifted right out of Indiana Jones and the bizarre idea of the magnetic rocks, the movie surpasses expectations. At least if you know what came before it…

Professor Anderson and his nephew Sean, in a screen moment where they encounter a creature that betrays a stupendous lack of imagination on the part of the digital effects team.

In theaters now, Brendan Fraser stars in the latest adaptation of Jules Verne’s 1864 novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” which has opened to luke-warm response but, as you’ll see in a minute, is mostly because so few people remember the previous film efforts of the story. Get ready for a Brendan Fraser movie to look Oscar worthy!

Jules Verne in 1892 (about age 64), blissfully unaware of the abuses that his third novel would suffer when made accessible to people who don’t like to read.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959)

Family Adventure, G, 132 mins.

1959 marked the first ever attempt to put Verne’s classic story on any screen, big or small, and it becomes immediately clear that no one had any idea what they were doing. Now, I should start by mentioning that this was an attempt to make a very intricate and ambitious science fiction story into a movie at a time when cinema magic was, to say the least, developing. It is no surprise that the special effects are limited but, ladies and gentlemen, I kid you not, they added a duck. I can’t imagine what Jules Verne must have done in his grave back in 1959. Just rolling over seems insufficient.

An astonished Peter Ronson is shocked to see what has become of his career.

I understand that a majority of the people who will go to see the latest adaptation have never read Verne’s novel (which is part of the reason I’m writing this post), but I don’t think it requires a deep understanding of the source material to really grasp why a pet duck being placed into the movie is such a deeply and genuinely bizarre and ridiculous idea. It has been nearly forgotten completely by now, but this has to go down as one of the most outlandish things that has ever made it into the final cut of any major film.

Unfortunately, very little attention is paid to the original story in this movie, it’s more an exploration of the emerging science fiction genre and a test of creativity in creating imaginary parts of a part of the earth that no one has ever seen.

Pat Boone and his fellow travellers, at the mercy of the set decorators.

The story concerns an Edinburgh professor who leads a small group of explorers on a journey in an effort to reach the center of the earth through a volcano in Iceland. They encounter all manner of primitive special effects and archaic sound stages, and occasionally break into song.

Oh yeah, did I mention it’s a musical? Another not so great idea…

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1999) (TV)

Action/Adventure, 4-part miniseries, 188 mins.

This 1999 made-for-TV adaptation of Verne’s novel, like it’s predecessor from 40 years earlier, has little to do with the original story, and this time they don’t even have the excuse of developing cinematic ability. The story is much more interesting, but the movie is packed with cheesy sets, goofy acting, ridiculous caricatures and atrocious special effects.

In the show’s defense, a good part of the first half (that’s the first 90 minutes or so, by the way) actually takes great care to follow the novel, but then skews off in a completely different direction, as though the screenwriter was sacked in mid-sentence and replaced with a xerox machine.

To make matters worse, some of the “bizarre and fascinating creatures” that they encounter on their journey are an entire society of English speaking people. That and the exterior scenes filmed in broad daylight are a little distracting to the whole subterranean theme…

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME (1967)

Science Fiction, Unrated, 87 mins.

Not to be confused with anything that has anything to do with Jules Verne, in 1967 this movie was made, about a similarly ambitious effort to reach the center of time. A good part of the reason that I watched the movie was because I was curious about whatever or wherever or whenever the center of time actually is.

It turns out that it is defined in the movie as “the balance between past and future,” although I had always been under the impression that that particular location was the tenuous and fleeting place generally known as “now.” Maybe a more interesting story would deal with a journey away from the center of time…

But here’s what I love about the movie. It’s about a group of scientists making this enormously complex attempt to reach the “center of time,” using enormously simple equipment. Soon, however, we are given the bizarre explanation that this is a $14 million project to create a satellite that can show pictures taken 24 hours ago. Is that how much $14 million buys? 24 hours? That’s really too bad. Maybe that’s why most people can only afford surveillance cameras. The cheap, boring, non-time-travelling ones. No one makes movies about those!

Then again, for all the cardboard simplicity of the lab, they did have a hydraulic lift built in to raise and lower people about 18 inches from the upper platform to the lower platform. A more frugal team would have installed the two stairs, but maybe these guys weren’t quite sure what to do with all that money.

The cast watching infomercials in an effort to figure out what to do with the other $13,968,622.46 they had left after the big screen tv and the hydraulic lift. How about a rocketship?

The latest Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) is far superior to any of these, I should say. For all it’s shortcomings, it’s a breath of fresh air compared to what came before it. Sadly, it may require the effort of watching these older movies, or at least reading this post about them, in order to really appreciate it. Enjoy!

Before you head out to check out the newest installment in The Mummy franchise, The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, here’s a quick recap of the preceding films…

THE MUMMY (1999)

Action/Adventure, PG-13, 125 mins.

An English librarian, of all people, enlists the help of a French legionnare named Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser), in an archaeological dig to find the ancient, lost city of Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead. Unfortunately, there is a band of shady treasure hunters on the same search, frantic to find the untold treasure said to be buried beneath the sands.

A race between the two groups ensues, their common foe being the high priests of Hamunaptra, who have guarded the city for 3,000 years. Soon, the mummy Imhotep (put to a grisly death 3,000 years in the past for getting a little too friendly with the Pharaoh’s mistress) is disturbed from his slumber, with the unfortunate side-effect of releasing a variety of plagues upon the unsuspecting people of Egypt. The manifestations of his sleep-induced irritability include locusts, rivers of blood, earthquakes, flies, and remarkably creepy flesh-eating beetles.

Sample dialogue: “Rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, save the world.”

An unrelated update of the 1932 Boris Karloff classic, The Mummy is a fast moving adventure film that places a lot of stock in its special effects and good-looking stars, but is still a fun ride despite a slight but permeating shallowness. Fraser’s Rick O’Connell is little more than a muddy conglomeration of the single-mindedness of Han Solo, the cheesy one-liners of James Bond, and the adventure spirit of Indiana Jones, but despite the lack of originality the entertainment value is undeniably high.

THE MUMMY RETURNS (2001)

Action/Adventure, PG-13, 130 mins.

Two years later, enter The Rock (by the way, that was a cool movie too). I have to say that it’s a good thing that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has such huge public appeal, because the tagline for this movie was “The most powerful force on earth is about to be unleashed by the two people who should know better.” It’s a bad sign when the studio itself advertises a movie using the main characters’ stupidity, although the first Mummy sequel was only slightly less well-received than it’s highly popular predecessor.

In Ancient Egypt, the Scorpion King was the leader of a menacing army until he sold his soul to Anubis and was erased from history. Reduced to a myth, it’s up to our heroes Rick and Evelyn (and their 8-year-old son Alex) to find the Bracelet of Anubis. Complicating matters is that the owner of the Bracelet also has control of the Scorpion King’s army, so it’s only natural that Imhotep should reappear and seek the thing himself.

Rick O’Conell and Imhotep suddenly smell what the Rock is cooking.

The Mummy Returns is a bigger and louder and faster version of the first film, with the added bonus of the character of the Scorpion King, who was so popular that, for better or worse, he spawned his own spinoff. Unconvincing battle sequences and a clunky script are balanced by an unrelenting pace and clever story, as well as some clever homages to past, and better, films.

THE SCORPION KING (2002)

Action/Adventure, PG-13, 92 mins.

Dwayne Johnson’s Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns was so successful and popular that Universal decided to make another movie dedicated to the character. We don’t really find out as much about the character as you would expect from his own personal movie, but if you want to get your Scorpion King fix, this is the place to get it.

In an ancient Egypt that predates the pyramids, rather than a story about a Pharaoh and his mistress (which was how we met Imhotep), here is a story about the evil King Memnon (not to be confused with the Greek king Agamemnon) and his sorceress, Cassandra. Johnson plays the unassuming Mathayus, a regular guy in ancient Egypt, you might say, until he pressed into action to stop Memnon from taking over the world.

The sorceress, Cassandra, clearly looking to start trouble.

Sadly, they put far too much stock into Johnson’s likability and not enough into other elements of the movie. The script is by the numbers and uninteresting, and the movie tries too hard with the comic relief, making itself into a bit of a joke. More importantly, the action and effects are the movie’s bread and butter, and since neither is very impressive, it’s not a good sign for the movie.

The Scorpion King, clearly looking for trouble

Johnson is dedicated to his performance and certainly gets an A for effort, but it’s just not enough to save it (I hope The Rock never reads this or I may find myself getting my ass kicked pretty soon). The real problem is that The Scorpion King is a fan’s film, much like WWF is a fan’s show but, like WWF, it just doesn’t mix too well with a mainstream audience. Still, the entertainment value is there, and it’s fun to watch Johnson and his real life good friend Michael Clark Duncan on screen together.

It seems that Michael Clark Duncan has forgiven The Rock for accidentally elbowing him on the chin during filming of The Scorpion King. What a guy!

THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR (2008)

Action/Adventure, PG-13, 111 mins.

Okay Jet Li, you’re on. Don’t let us down!