Last year, ABC brought us an epic 4-episode run of a new musical adventure comedy, Galavant. It was funny, the songs were catchy, and the guest stars were a-plenty; Ricky Gervais, John Stamos, Rutger Hauer, and “Weird” Al Yankovic to name a few. Now the show is returning with an even epic-er 5-episode second season.

Watch the hilarious musical preview below.

Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior
Directed by Russell Mulcahy
Starring Michael Copon, Randy Couture, Karen David, Simon Quarterman, Natalie Becker
Universal Home Entertainment
Release date: August 19, 2008

I received the standard and Blu-ray DVDs for Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior, and had planned on doing the standard disc review myself, but I just got bogged down with other tasks, so I sent it out to one of my writers. Since I don’t have a Blu-ray player [yet], I sent that out to Henchman21 (read his review), who flat out told me this was not a good movie and that he had trouble even finishing the viewing. The other writer could conjure up little more than to say that the movie was “in a word, shit.”

When people give something such bad reviews like this, I just HAVE to see it for myself, because I wonder, can it really be all that bad and if so, why? I have to know!

So, I pop in the disc and prepare to be brutally assaulted by what I am now expecting to be pure and utter crap and after 20 minutes of the film I found myself thinking, jeez, it’s not that bad.

This is a direct-to-DVD prequel to 2002’s Scorpion King, which itself was a prequel/spin-off to Universal’s The Mummy Returns, which had Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Mathayus/Scorpion King. The key words here are direct-to-DVD, so right there you know not to expect something on par with the Academy Award-winning Gladiator.

Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior
Directed by Russell Mulcahy
Starring Michael Copon, Randy Couture, Karen David, Simon Quarterman
Universal Home Entertainment
Release date: August 19, 2008

A funny thing happened about halfway through this movie, the Minotaur showed up, and suddenly I realized that I was watching an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journey. This is not to say I was ever a fan of Hercules, but I was just very much reminded of that series. The dimly lit sets, the goofy comic relief, the bad CG monsters, yes it had it all. And like Hercules, Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior had a simple charm to it, and I found myself starting to appreciate it.

Now let’s get this out of the way. This is NOT a good movie. It looks about as good as you would expect a direct-to-DVD movie to look. The dialogue is pretty wooden, as are a lot of the actors. I mean, you don’t even get to make fun of The Rock, or ogle Kelly Hu’s magnificent figure, which is pretty much the only reason to watch the first Scorpion King film.