Before I get into this piece, let me be clear that Universal does not pay me to be kind to their Mummy franchise. I wish they did, cuz I’d have quite a bit of cash right now. I’m simply a fan of the movies.

When I was at Comic Con last weekend, I found out that none of my fellow movie bloggers was looking forward to The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I was the only one, as I happen to be a great fan of Universal’s The Mummy franchise (starting with the first one from 1932). At the Con, I made it a point to get back to the big Hall for the Universal panel, which would have the cast from the third Mummy movie.

My friend and fellow movie blogger David Chen sat in front of me as a clip was shown of the Yeti attack sequence. It was CGI-heavy and had a few corny bits of dialogue. When it was finished, David stood up, turned to me with a horrified look on his face, and then without a word, walked out of the hall.

I’ll admit, at that moment, my anticipation of the film started to dissipate, but I wasn’t going to let such a tiny sample of a 2-hour movie influence me. I read some of the early reviews of the film, the majority of which were incredibly negative. I started to wonder, How bad could this movie possibly be? But, I still had every intention of seeing Mummy 3 and judging it for myself.

I went to see the film this evening, thoroughly braced for bad CGI, cringe-inducing dialogue, and the possibility of over-all badness. It turns out it was all for nothing, because The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was a fun, enjoyable action flick.

Now I’m not saying it was a perfect movie. It wasn’t. Some of the online reviewers said they thought the movie was so bad that they left the theater early. Umm… c’mon, this was definitely not deserving of a walk-out. I was at a Sunday night showing in a fully packed theater and people laughed and cheered in all the right places. The crowd was lively and no one seemed to be dissecting the movie the way the online movie critic community does. They were just plain having fun with it, and so was I, and so did Roger Ebert, who said:

Now, if you are not a fan of The Mummy movies or you maybe dislike star Brendan Fraser, then of course, you will not like this recent offering. That’s a given. Otherwise, I think if Roger Ebert can enjoy it, so can you, and so can my buddy David Chen, who wrote a piece for /Film in defense of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

His basic argument is that the third Mummy film, which had at the time of his writing a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes (it’s currently down to 9%), was not all that much different in quality than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which has 76% at RT. So why the drastic difference in rating?

The reviews listed on RT are severely critical of Mummy 3, yet what one critic hates, another says is the best part of the film. For example, here’s the excerpt from the review by friend of GoD Kevin Carr of FSR, whose review is listed as “rotten”:

But, Nick Rogers of State Journal-Register, whose review also has the movie as “rotten,” is excerpted as saying:

So what is it, are the Yetis the good part or the bad part?

Let me clear it up for you folks: it’s a bunch of fucking Yetis. These are creatures that do not exist in the real world and therefore for this movie they were created through CGI — how real would you like them to be? Was it necessary for them to make gestures as if they knew about football? I’d say no, but I’m guessing director Rob Cohen was trying to make a connection with modern-day audiences — and it worked, because people were cheering during that scene. And, hey, I dug the Yetis.

Let’s try to remember that the average movie-goer does not dissect a movie the way a film critic/movie blogger does. They are going about their daily lives, working to pay the bills, taking care of the kids, and sitting in traffic, so when they dish out some cash for tickets and popcorn for their family to see a big-name blockbuster summer movie, they just want to be entertained for two hours. They aren’t sitting there going, Gee, that Yeti looks fake or Brendan Fraser only looks a few years older than the guy who plays his son. They don’t give a shit and I don’t blame them.

Look, in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor we have the expected gunfights and fistfights (which is typical to Brendan Fraser‘s Rick O’Connell), while Maria Bello‘s Evey O’Connell even got to kick a lot of ass, too. (Yes, I missed the hell out of the original Evey, Rachel Weisz, mainly because I happen to love Weisz and love her as Evey, but I can’t hold it against the movie because she decided not to reprise her role.) Their son Alex (Luke Ford), while he didn’t really win me over, showed that he’s following in his father’s action-hero footsteps. Add to that a resurrected shapeshifting Jet Li as the title Emperor (c’mon, it’s Jet fucking Li!), Michelle Yeoh as a powerful witch, and Isabella Leong as her daughter Lin, along with plenty of martial arts moves and an epic undead battle sequence and I think we have ourselves a quality action movie. (Oh, and that ancient times prologue was pretty bad ass, too — now that’s some good spin-off material right there.)

Get it? It’s an action movie, hence why audiences are satisfied. The film made over $42.4 million on its weekend opening, coming in just behind The Dark Knight in its third week (and actually, it won the Friday box office against TDK by $2.6 million). That’s not a bad take-in at all — it’s more than the $36 million Hellboy II made in its opening weekend (the week BEFORE TDK was released). And let’s face it, if TDK wasn’t crushing every movie in sight since it opened, the headlines would be saying how The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was the ruler of this weekend’s box office, since it made far more then every other movie, including new releases Step Brothers ($16.3 million) and Swing Vote ($6.3 million).

This movie does not deserve the flack it’s getting and I think David Chen expressed this sentiment much more eloquently than I ever could:

So basically what I’m saying it, it’s a fun summer action movie … lighten up and enjoy.