A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: The Mummy Returns (2001)

Date Viewed: 5/28/01

Details:

Brendan Frazier

Rachel Weisz

Arnold Vosloo (Imhotep)

John Hannah

Dwayne ("The Rock") Johnson (Scorpion King)

Patricia Velazquez

Written and directed by: Stephen Sommers

Score: 1/2

The Review: A worthy successor to The Mummy (2000), albeit even more unbelievable: filled with past life overlays, human-arachnid chimeras, retrieval of the soul from beyond the veil of death, rain-forests hidden in the deserts of the Upper Nile, tele-vision (in the paranormal sense; this has nothing to do with electronics), mutant pygmy cannibal assassins, a mysterious source for a lot of water, ancient stylized Egyptian knife duels (first you walk like an Egyptian, then you dance), and our favorite smirking beetle-infested mummy. And the believable parts include?

This time there's a young son to serve as the lightning rod for misjudgment and calamity. He seems to have recombined the "klutziness" and "magnet for catastrophe" genes of his parents in even more penetrant forms, but somewhere in there is also a child prodigy, which relieves the audience of the need to worry about his ability to take care of himself. There are enough other things to be concerned with, that this is appreciated.

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