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I was sleeping badly anyway, really, up every hour or two, so I simply gave up when the really loud music started. Really, it could be much worse. The upstairs neighbors are a sweet young goth couple with a very well behaved son. They limit their music to an hour or so at a pop and only play it loud in afternoons or early evenings. If I could hear the lyrics and melody through the ceiling instead of just an incredibly loud base line, I'd probably like their bands. It's just I can't sleep through it and I was too ill and it was too loud for me to read or even deal with, so I cashed my free ticket to the movies. The plan was, watch the movie for free (buy nothing), and hit the evening food bank. I cleverly sprained my ankle getting the food inside. Ouch.


Long, long ago, some friends and I went to see the first Jurassic Park in a theater back when it was new. Three of us were disgruntled afterwards due to the bad plot and annoying characters. (Don't start me on my theory of faux-feminism as applied to Jurassic Park and Medicine Man or I'll lose track of the review.) Suffice to say, we were legitimately miffed for completely valid reasons we could elaborate. Asher was blissful. We didn't get it. He was a bright guy; how could he love the movie. Asher said words that I have taken to heart to this day, "I came to see the giant dinosaurs running around on the big screen. There were dinosaurs and they were good."

Those of you who were my friends during the Troy debacle may not credit this, but sometimes I go to a blockbuster to "see the dinosaurs." Movies I do this with, I don't require to be good, though I'm happy to be surprised. My standards are generally pretty high and for me to lower my standards this way, I have to anticipate and see something very pretty indeed.

I explain this because all I really expected from The Mummy III was beautiful shots of terra cotta soldiers marching and fighting and stuff and a vague hope that I'd get to see Jet Li fight people, preferably the charming Michelle Yeoh, of whom I am fond. The measuring stick is primarily held up to these expectations. For the rest... my expectations were low.

This was a good thing, really. The terra cotta stuff was absolutely wonderful on the big screen. Completely satisfying. The fighting rather less so for much the same reason that watching the fighting in Blood Sport is disappointing. In Blood Sport, they went around to a whole bunch of gyms where they fought different styles and picked the best guys willing to be in the film. There are some absolutely stunning bouts between various masters, but the narrative arc requires Claude van Damme to win, and it completely breaks any suspension of disbelief that this could happen, having seen the gentlemen involved fighting. Because of the essential mismatch between Jet Li and the leads, I built up hopes for Yeoh/Li battle that simply weren't satisfied, leaving me with the martial arts equivalent of blue balls.

The rest of the film, didn't manage to live up to my popcorn/B-movie expectations either. The humor was either non existent or aimed for the under ten set. The new young leads were problematic. The actor and the character of the son were highly unappealing by being bland and abrasive simultaneously. My guess is they were trying to make him a contrast with Brendon Frasier, but it simply pointed out how banal the family plot was and I kept wanting to fast forward over the dialog so I wouldn't have to watch him "act." The ingenue was problematic as well. she was lovely still or in motion, and her acting was fine as long as it was silent. unfortunately, her English dialog sounded wooden, as if it was memorized phonetically and she was afraid if she didn't get it out quickly, she forget how to pronounce the next sentence. This made for real awkwardness in scenes were the two of them were alone together as they were awkward together, her acting an emotion with her face and body, but with a flat delivery and him with acting skills only a degree above Hayden Christensen's, no chemistry, and material to get through that I've seen in more TV shows than I could count.

Honestly, they'd have been much better off to boil down the boilerplate interpersonal stuff to a few key lines and looks, instead of making everything elaborated and wasting all that screen time. Show it, don't tell it. This would have minimized the weaknesses of the younger pair and I wouldn't have been left squirming by sequences like half naked Brendan Fraser making out with his wife in front of their son and long awkward dialog sequences telling me stuff I already knew when I really wanted to be watching exciting Mummy action. (It's not that I would have minded them playing the Freudian angle if I could have been convinced it was intentional. I mean, yes, there was plenty of blatant d**k measuring by proxy elsewhere, but watching that kissing sequence I felt like no one shooting it had thought it through).

There was also the basic problem I have with anything like this. I am uncomfortable with the bad archeology and I wince every time an antiquity, archaeological find, or irreplaceable bit of architecture is ruined. I do realize that this is a personal problem. I know intellectually that those are sets and props, but I hate the thought of it.