Best Brendan Frasier movie of the summer

August 3, 2008

I saw the new Mummy flick last night, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. And for once I’m going to disagree with the critical consensus at RottenTomatos — I thought this was a better movie than Brendan Frasier’s other summer flick, Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Now I’ll admit there were problems with this latest Mummy flick. Like Jet Li — the guy is not a great actor to begin with, and here he is given very little to do except walk around looking angry. Or maybe the direction he got was to walk around looking mildly constipated, I can’t really tell. Besides about two-thirds of the time that Li’s character is on screen it’s just a CGI version of him.

And yes the plot is convoluted and unbelievable. But the movie makers clearly weren’t taking themselves seriously, they were having fun. And I think that translates from the screen, this was just a fun movie to watch.

It doesn’t look at deeper issues the way Dark Knight did, it’s not full of the warmth and charm that Kung Fu Panda had. Among the summer blockbusters, this one and the new Indiana Jones flick are probably closest to the archetype — just big dumb fun.