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Action/Drama/Comedy/Romance. Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, Luke Ford, John Hannah, Michelle Yeoh, Isabella Leong, Russell Wong, Liam Cunningham. Director: Rob Cohen.

Stephen Sommers, writer-director of The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, and leading lady Rachel Weisz sensibly bailed out of this dull third chapter of the globetrotting adventure series.

The rest of the cast returns for replacement director Rob Cohen, plus a few new faces, including martial arts superstar Jet Li, as the flimsy storyline gallops from the catacombs of China to the snow-laden peaks of the Himalayas.

The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor may be full of Eastern promises, but it doesn't deliver on any of them. Action set pieces lack their usual jolt of adrenaline-pumping excitement, banter between the characters is sluggish and leading man Fraser's familiar humour deserts him.

Opening in 200 BC, the film spews a brief history of the rise of the Dragon Emperor (Li) and the construction of the Great Wall of China, and his defeat at the hands of a wily sorceress (Yeoh), who curses the 10,000-strong army to spend the rest of time as terracotta statues.

Fast-forwarding to 1946, archaeologist Alex O'Connell (Ford) uncovers the Emperor in his burial chamber, thereby unleashing the otherworldly ruler and his minions on an unsuspecting world.

With the fate of mankind hanging in the balance, Alex turns to the only people who can stop the Emperor: gung-ho explorer father Rick (Fraser), equally feisty mother Evelyn (Bello) and accident-prone uncle Jonathan (Hannah).

Beautiful tomb guardian Lin (Leong) aids Alex but the young man is poorly equipped to lead such a perilous mission, setting up the inevitable clash between father and son.

The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor borrows heavily from Raiders Of The Lost Ark for the descent into the Emperor's booby-trapped tomb, then lazily mimics Lord Of The Rings for a battle between the Emperor's men and an army of resurrected skeleton warriors.

Bello concentrates so hard on affecting a wavering English accent that she has no energy to deliver a credible performance.

Hannah's bumbling comedy sidekick is completely surplus to requirements. His most memorable scene is a flirtation with the projectile-vomiting bovine; a bizarre interlude, even by the standards of The Mummy films, clumsily orchestrated to feed Jonathan the groan-worthy line: "The yak yakked".

Li is wasted, forced to spend the majority of the film caked in computer-generated clay. Humour tends to be puns or euphemisms, like when Jonathan dissuades Alex from pursuing one of Shanghai's hussies by whispering, "In archaeological terms, that is a tomb in which many pharaohs have lain".

The same criticism could be leveled at the plodding and predictable script.

2:37pm Thursday 7th August 2008

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