The first movie was an adventure supported by special effects and action sequences. The sequel is an action movie supported by a plot that strings sequences together. What tie the two together are the humour and the sheer energy of writer/director Stephen Sommers. You can tell he has little respect for his audience, though: when a sign reading `Cairo’ is featured prominently in the background, he feels the need to have a caption `Cairo, Egypt.’

I will also congratulate Sommers for his dealing with the kid. Kids in movies are routinely too smart for their own good, terribly cute and so annoying that you want to kill them. Alex’s (Freddie Boath)“Are we there yet?” scene could have been enough for me to hire mercenaries to collect his head. But because the villain is getting annoyed, we’re able to like him, and also because Alex contributes to the end result, rather than being a bystander who continually has to be saved or kept out of trouble.

But since this movie is a collection of action sequences and computer graphics, let’s talk about them. Sommers knows that we’re after fast-paced entertainment, but he throws too much at us. The film is long at 121 minutes, and could have done without one or two sequences (I would have preferred the ending to have been shortened; they could have stretched out the battle with the Anubis warriors instead of having another army rise from the sand; and since Evie falling out the balloon was obviously cut, why did they bother to leave any of it in? Rick could have come up behind her, prevented her from falling out, and she could have said something about having another vision. Also, why have a dream sequence fight longer than the real thing, when, in the dream, the hero can’t get hurt?).

The sequences as they stand, though, are mostly terrific. Sommers knows how to direct a fight scene, be it a duel, a major battle scene, or a group of humans against killer pygmies. He borrows from “The Matrix” and “Charlie’s Angels” in slowing down and speeding up the action, but doesn’t try to remake the former’s scenes, and doesn’t overdo it like the latter. Thankfully, he doesn’t abuse wire-fu either, relying more on fight choreography than trick photography. The duels between Evie and Anck-Su-Namun, although the first goes on too long and the second too short, are excellently done. I’m sure Rachel Weisz insisted that Evie do a little more in this film, rather than just explaining the plot and getting kidnapped, and I’m very pleased with the results. (okay, she does the other things too, but she is less the love interest and more the heroine, partly because she and Rick are already married)

Also well done are the fights between vast armies. Unlike those in “Gladiator” and “Braveheart”, they aren’t overly bloody and graphic, because rarely are humans fighting humans. In fact, this only happens in the first battle, involving the Rock showing off his wrestling moves. Otherwise, the humans are fighting creatures that burst into sand when shot or hit with a sword. Sommers manages to inject humour into such battles, either through jokes (the pygmies jumping on people’s heads), or because the fights themselves are staged to look plain silly. When I saw this film in the cinema, I was very surprised that few people laughed at moments like Rick stylishly catching a knife and throwing it back at a bad guy. Things like that are meant to be ridiculous, and the crowd took them seriously.

What lets the film down is the quality of the computer graphics. They look just like computer graphics, and rather than stirring our imagination, they pander to what we expect. They reminded me of the graphics in “Titanic”, bearing in mind that it was made four years ago, where the graphics looked totally fake and were not awe-inspiring. After four years of graphic development, you’d think that the graphics would look closer to real, and they have, in films such as “The Matrix” and even in the first “Mummy” film. They would look a lot better, but for the fact that that they are used so often. I don’t deny that the graphics were used well in creating armies, mummies, pygmies, etc, but, as I’ve said, part of the reason that the duels worked so well is because they relied more on fighting than visual trickery.

The humour in the film works really well. Ardeth Bay has a great line after taking care of the four mummies. John Hannah has fun with his comic character, admitting that he is the `screaming girl’ the movie requires; even Boath gets to make us laugh. The fight scenes are often funny, as is the interplay between Evie and Rick. Brendan Fraser isn’t quite as funny as he was in the first film, mostly because he’s more of an action hero now. Arnold Vosloo’s Imhotep enjoys some of his own moments, but, as a villain, he gets to be more menacing than anything else.

Naturally enough, the script is riddled with holes and cliches. Having been kidnapped, why doesn’t Evie try to escape before they try to kill her? How exactly does Rick outrun the rising sun? Why does Imhotep accept hell above life, when he takes great pleasure rising from the dead? Several years have passed – wouldn’t Rick and Ardeth, among others, have lost some of their physical capabilities? As Jonathan points out, the plot has “the old `taking over the world’ ploy.” Do the tribes suffer no casualties at all fighting Anubis’ warriors? If so, why are they worried about the second army? How the film’s Egyptology consultant will ever find work again is beyond me. Exactly what he was doing on set is also beyond me, as he clearly had only minute impact on the finished product. But that doesn’t really matter in a movie like this, because Sommers creates an experience that is worth watching, so long as you don’t think.

NOTE: I'd like to give this three-and-a-half stars, and so I'm being generous and rounding up.

Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8