The Mummy Returns

And why does the mummy return? For the cash, apparently, as every vestige of art, originality or individual vision is sacrificed in the name of focus-grouped pabulum in this intensely insulting movie that will prove once again that the American public wants nothing more than to see the bar lowered well below floor level. Brendan Fraser is the hero, a grave robber who, when not desecrating the holy places of other cultures, likes to shoot non-white peoples with his enormous shotgun. Rachel Weisz is his similarly heroic, morally bankrupt wife. Thanks to their atrocious parenting skills they manage to get their young son mixed up in a 5,000-year-old plot for world domination. That's the story, but it's beside the point. The Mummy Returns is about nothing except non-stop action, and I mean that in the worst possible way. This is action porn: Someone enters the scene, says two lines of dialogue, and then there's a 20-minute sequence of sword fighting and explosions. Repeat 10 times and you have a movie. It's amazing how quickly that kind of thing gets boring. Still, if you think you'd like nothing more than to see entertainment dumbed down to the level of chewing, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you take yourself to The Mummy Returns.