journal features

movie review - The Mummy Returns

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Vancouver, 2001.09.11

Sequels are never as good as the originals, and this is yet another sequel. Whereas the first version was a fun update of the Indiana Jones stories, this one really just comes across as a money maker. It rehashes the original shamelessly, and does the usual damage that sequels often do to your favourite characters (mine, in this case, was the brother Jonathan, who gets dumbed down while the main character loses his rogueishness).

This one is worth watching on a plane or TV, but that's about it.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner