Despite having a lot of flaws, a LOT of flaws… THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR succeeds at being pretty much in line with the two prior installments of the MUMMY series… it is, despite everything, goofy fun.

Going in you should know that you will be missing Rachel Weisz. And you should also know that Rob Cohen should be put in some sort of cinematic reform school for criminal mishandling of the long awaited Jet Li versus Michelle Yeoh face-off… which fans of Asian martial arts cinema have been waiting decades to see. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Remember, I said it was fun.

This is the third chapter in a MUMMY series that Stephen Sommers set the rules for. So there will be much mugging, much silliness, crazy zany cg antics – and it will all be in the name of goofy fun.

By goofy fun, I mean you’ll have an adorable Isabella Leong as Lin crying out for help from her Yeti friends – and suddenly the most cuddly action star versions of Yeti ever will come to help defeat evil commie Chinese militarists serving an ancient evil (not really a mummy, but man that was covered in clay – superheated into being a mummified corpse encased inside a terracotta coated replica of himself) which seeks to “rule the world.”

In this third version of THE MUMMY – you’ll find that the O’Connells are retired from the Adventure game and living in a crazy palatial estate – bored out of their skull. Meanwhile, their little boy, who was like 8 last time we saw him, is now around 18 and he’s dropped out of boring ol school and set out to adventuring and discovering on his own. He has discovered the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Who, in the opening, we learn dreamt of unifying China and mastering the world of ancient magic and dreamt of defeating his last major foe, DEATH ITSELF.

This (2000 years ago) sequence is lavishly produced, as you’d imagine – and shows Jet controlling the elements and needing the help of a “witch” named Zi Juan, played by Michelle Yeoh. He sends his General Yang to help her discover how to live forever, with implicit instructions that no man touch her. Well, General Yang discovers that Zi is the Yin to his Yang. This, of course, pisses off Jet Li – and really, seriously – if Jet Li were your Emperor… and he had the power of the elements and he was as badass as Jet Li obviously is… would you stick a dick to the lady he wanted? Not me. But Yang has a yin for Yeoh – and who doesn’t? It all goes south, he rips Yang into at least 5 major pieces. Yeoh curses him to muddy terracotta eternal exile… Until – Teen O’Connell finds him and takes him to Shanghai.

Well, Rick and Evey are asked by the state department to take this pretty awesome sacred treasure thingamagig to Shanghai, because… well, they’re good at that sort of thing – and the bored O’Connells decide to go because Evey’s brother Jonathan happens to have a ritzy ditzy swanky club in Shanghai… but they don’t know their kid is there.

As soon as they arrive, they find their son trying to shag another man’s lady – who Rick just happens to know – and ya know – Jonathan’s Club IMHOTEP is pretty damn nice. Gold Leafed dancing broads, sweet drinks and gorgeous set design. It’s pretty damn sweet.

Later we learn that the guy that Alex was working with was actually being financed by this evil bastard played by Russell Wong ( star of billions of great fucking Hong Kong films, but whose most awesome performance was in HUMAN MEAT PIES ). Now I have to state, that my personal favorite thing about this movie is that Anthony Wong is in a gigantic budgeted American film – as a semi-major character. He has dreamt of bringing the Dragon Emperor back to life to restore China to the greatness that he feels only the mythical Dragon Emperor could.

Of course there’s a ridiculously complicated series of steps and points to which the bad guy must go in order to eventually doom the entire world – but luckily for Alex and his parents – this assassin turned girlfriend wannabe – knows every evil step the bastards must do in order to become evil bastards. The part that confuses me is how the Dragon Emperor and his evil bastards know the steps.

I mean, last I knew – the evil Dragon Emperor didn’t have a clue how to live forever. He thought that Yeoh had to do some magical spell for him to live forever, now apparently everyone knows that there’s this pool somewhere in Shangri La – which you get to by going to the Gold Tower thing and putting a special diamond thing on top and suddenly you’ll know where to go… BUT MY POINT IS… Exactly how does the Dragon Emperor, who has been in Clay for like two thousand years… and how would Anthony Wong know this? Anyway, I’m crying logic in a Mummy movie? Seriously – Stop.

Anyway – the overall goal is to get Jet Li back to looking like Jet Li – then he wakes up his Terracotta army – then for some reason he has to march them over the Great Wall of China where they all become invincible – and then he’s set to rule the world. And for some reason, when the Dragon Emperor has Immortal status (except for getting stabbed by this one immortal proof knife) he can shape shift into badass evil shit like 3 headed dragons and demon dogs. But my question is… if you could become Ghidorah – why would you ever be human again? Because you’re an immortal flying 3 headed dragon… isn’t that better than being able to suck your own cock? Pretty much, right?

To continue… Yeoh knows how to get an undead army of her own – cuz basically – everyone knows that when the shit hits the fan – you’ve got an army of undead waiting to asskick for you.

Now we all know that the good guys will win, the fun is just how they get there. The film does borrow from at least one 3rd chapter of a previous archeological adventure fantasy series with a maybe death of a major character… but basically it’s all fun stuff. Mind you if you’re out to critically annihilate this movie, it can be done.

However, my major complaints with the film come in three packages.

1) I miss Rachel Weisz. No offense to Maria Bello. She’s fine in the movie. In fact, you’ll like her. But she just isn’t as awesomely cute as Rachel. She isn’t goofily inquisitive – and Maria’s chemistry with Brendan just isn’t what Rachel’s was. I just miss Rachel. I believed that she and Brendan had a thing for each other. Bello just seems to not belong in a Mummy movie.

2) Jet Li’s Dragon Emperor is a one dimensional villain with no real sense of character. Arnold Vosloo’s Imhotep was great because while he wanted to rule the world (who doesn’t) he was actually more obsessive compulsive about his sweet ass Anck Su Namun. Who would be really sweet to rule the world with. But Jet’s badass just has a desire to live forever because he apparently has more that he wants to do than a single lifetime could afford him… not that the movie gives us enough time to learn what his “beautiful vision” was. Instead he just seems to want to be a bad bastard for eternity, which makes him pretty unsympathetic.

3) Lastly – Rob Cohen’s criminal mishandling of Jet Li versus Michelle Yeoh. Here the director had the opportunity to construct the most awesome mystical martial arts battle of all time between an all-powerful ancient wizard (Jet Li) and a 2000 year old eternal magical witch that has had nothing but time to learn to be the most awesome badass ever (Michelle Yeoh) – and what does Rob Cohen give us? A quick cut cheapo and unintelligible, ungraceful, uninspired battle. Seriously it’s like they got to this moment and said – ok kick at each other… CUT… Hit at each other… CUT… Do More Kick and Hit stuff… CUT – and so on and so forth. SUPREMELY DISAPPOINTING.

That all said – it still manages to be very fun. Just realize it’s fun with problems – The film is still pretty vintage adventure – it still has fun magical mystical puzzles to figure out. And the change to China is very much welcomed.

In my book, the movie is totally worth it for the cute Yeti badasses and some of the throwaway Undead army stuff that had me giggling. I actually think though that Stephen did a better job with the previous two Mummy movies, as Cohen seems to not be at home with the style this movie is in. And frankly – I kinda think Sommers might have understood that Yeoh vs. Li was something that deserved more than a day or two to shoot. That was a two week epic battle waiting to be choreographed by a master choreographer – with cool magical three headed dragon versus Serpentine Dragon fun.

That said it is a fun distraction for a hot summer’s day or night. But only if you’ve seen DARK KNIGHT, HELLBOY 2, IRON MAN, INCREDIBLE HULK, WALL-E, WANTED, SPEED RACER and KUNG FU PANDA first. It is much better than THE LOVE GURU, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, MEET DAVE, SEX AND THE CITY, GET SMART, the new X-FILES movie and HANCOCK.