Arriving a scant two years later, The Mummy Returns is hardly the classic that the original film became. However, it has its qualities, and chief among them remains Fraser and Weisz’s ability to smolder as Rick and Evie. And as became the custom for family-skewing franchises in the early 2000s after The Phantom Menace, The Mummy Returns also introduced a precocious child (Freddie Boath) to join in the escapades, making Rick and Evie a literal family unit.
Even so, Sommers never lost sight of the allure of his leads’ chemistry. In fact, he avoided the trapping of many other contemporary sequels that went similar routes, such as the disastrous sequel to 1998’s hugely entertaining The Mask of Zorro. Despite that first movie being a superb crowdpleaser in large part because of the smolder between Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones (the latter in a star-making role), the belated 2000s sequel, The Legend of Zorro, not only gave them their own precocious child sidekick, but decided to almost immediately divorce the parents and set them against each in an antagonistic relationship for the rest of the movie. It was ostensibly intended to replicate the sizzle of the first film’s will-they-or-won’t-they-get-together; instead the movie curdled it.
This is the same mistake made by many similar sequels of this era (see: the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and National Treasure: Book of Secrets). However, for whatever other faults The Mummy Returns suffers, it never forgets that audiences were won over by its stars’ chemistry in the first place. And never once are Rick and Evie pitted against each other in a strained attempt to generate conflict, nor are their scenes rushed through in order to get to one of the pricy action sequences (which is, ahem, where The Mummy Returns actually runs into trouble).
Rather the film doubles down on the sexiness and banter of its now married leads, pausing for multiple sequences of Evie prodding old war buddies about Rick’s bachelor days, or a scene of what could be dry exposition turned into giddy fooling around as Evie recounts the legend of the Scorpion King by falling into her hubby’s arms.
In at least this sense, The Mummy Returns has aged far better than many of its franchised contemporaries and works best at the end when the film reveals itself to be a contrast in love stories between that of Rick and Evie, and that of the undead Imhotep (Vosloo) and Anck-Su-Namun (Patricia Velásquez)—something that plays a lot better than anything involving Dwayne Johnson’s face being digitally rendered by what appears to be PlayStation 2 technology.
Of course Rick and Evie are not the only core ingredients in the spell Sommers was able to conjure with that first Mummy. Actual on-location filming in North Africa (Morocco doubling for Egypt) grounds the action a way that is still endearing, no matter how ancient the CG effects around those real sand dunes become; the larger supporting cast including Vosloo, John Hannah, Oded Fehr, and Velásquez constitute nothing less than a charm offensive which that still leaves social media breathlessly insisting that the movies marked the great bisexual awakening of the millennial generation. Also, frankly my dear, the movie remains the best Indiana Jones flick made after 1989.
