The Number 23

The “Mummy” franchise has unceasingly been the B-flick picture show rendering of the “Indiana Jones” films, which themselves are B flick picture shows distinguished by Steven Spielberg into an strength-gamble colossus. So what does that grasp the “Mummy” films in the sum projection of likings? C bigs? More in the matter of This talking picture The third installment, “mausoleum of the Dragon Emperor,” directed by Rob Cohen (“XXX,” “The rapid and the up the wall”), is by far the weakest. In it the upset-pining for squelch-and-mate exploring span, Rick and Evelyn O’Connell (Brendan Fraser and Maria Bello, who replaces Rachel Weisz), concern out of retirement in 1946 to expeditions to Shanghai, where they are tricked into ration raise from the dead an pestilential 2,000-year-old emperor (Jet Li). The emperor’s organizations to beconcern Olympian all those years ago were foiled when a compassionate sorceress (Michelle Yeoh) laid a obscenity on him. While in Shanghai, Rick and Evelyn run into their scampish college dropout son, Alex (the charmless Luke Ford). When the affliction is accidentally lifted, the emperor, joined by a dissenter Chinese army, rushes to the Himalayas, where a dip in a kitty in Shangri-La promises famousity. He already has mystic powers and likes to twist himself into a three-headed dragon. Accompanying the O’Connells is Evelyn’s odd fish, wisecracking associate Jonathan (John Hannah), who during the desert to the mountains is vomited on by a yak. The kindest ummy to be said for this overwrought, cluttered plight of cheesy computer-generated combat-affair cliche's is that at least you can see how the estimated $175 million budget (according to the Internet talking picture Database) was spent. We get an avalanche, an army of bow-and-arrow-wielding skeletons, a car pursuit that twists into a fireworks tantrum, and a cadre of snowy yetis. In the film’s sterile handle to conjure visceral disquiet, the proceeding sequences are edited into an scrambled shuffle that grasps you bear trapped on a shaky airplane sitting in a league of yak vomit. “The Mummy: mausoleum of the Dragon Emperor” is rated PG-13 (Parents forcefully cautioned). It has some reinforced interaction and calm violence.