Color me crazy, but I hold 1999's action-packed The Mummy in as high regard as Raiders of the Lost Ark. Both served up such spectacular thrills, well-balanced humor, and nostalgic storytelling, it was impossible not to have the time of my life. But just as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull started off this year's summer movie season on a downer note for me, the latest chapter of the Mummy saga ends it  with a whimper instead of a bang. Like Skull, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor doesn't feel like it was made to advance the characters or because the filmmakers had an exciting new story to tell. The movie seems to exist simply to cash in on the Mummy name. It's a hollow excuse for a blockbuster, amounting to little more than two hours worth of noise and so-so special effects.

It's the late 1940s, and the O'Connells, Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn (Maria Bello, standing in for the inimitable Rachel Weisz), have left their adventuring ways behind in favor leading a more quiet and peaceful existence. Such serenity proves to be short-lived, as they are soon asked to escort a valuable jewel to Shanghai, China, where they drop in on their gadabout son Alex (Luke Ford). Having followed in his parents' archaeological footsteps, Alex has just helped in uncovering the lost tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Jet Li), an ancient Chinese ruler who almost went on to conquer the world, until he and his loyal army, according to legend, were cursed to remain encased in stone for eternity. But wouldn't you know it, the jewel Rick and Evelyn have been protecting is soon seized by sinister forces and used to bring the Dragon Emperor back to life. Dead-set on continuing where he left off, the Dragon Emperor seeks out the mythical city of Shangri-La to grant him even greater powers, leaving it up to Rick, Evelyn, Alex, and Evelyn's wisecracking brother Jonathan (John Hannah) to stop him before it's too late.

Say what you will about Stephen Sommers' tendency to pack three movies' worth of stories into one package in his features, but with The Mummy (and, to a lesser extent, The Mummy Returns), he captured  the right flavor and atmosphere necessary to make the film work like a charm. The trouble with Tomb of the Dragon Emperor involves the amount of time it spends trying to decide what sort of movie it wants to be. The story moves away from the horror-tinged, Egyptian roots of the first two films in favor of incorporating more Asian elements into the plot. I'm all for this move, but instead of injecting a sense of freshness into the proceedings, Tomb feels like the stuffiest offering of the whole series. The movie meanders all over the place in terms of tone, one minute serving as a Zhang Yimou-style costume drama and the next having Jet Li shoot computer-generated flames out of every orifice. Tomb is a movie  too eager to please the viewer, juggling so many responsibilities and subplots that it drops them all and spends the third act just picking up the pieces.

How else do filmmakers explain a legion of CG creations literally coming out of nowhere? I'm not saying there was any logic to The Mummy's sandstorm face swallowing some of the characters, but at least a little build up was involved there and the image looked really cool. In comparison, all of Tomb's fantastic sights emerge from left field and incite more giggles than awe. There's no other way to react to the sudden appearance of some Yeti (a.k.a. abominable snowmen), who are introduced as an all-too-convenient deus ex machina, or to the Dragon Emperor's randomly-used ability to change into different monsters. 

Fraser is strangely flat here, devoid of the sort of goofball charm that helped last month's Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D be a little more bearable. Bello tries to establish a new sort of personality for Evelyn, which is honorable enough in theory, but I found myself missing Rachel Weisz's plucky adventuress and bemoaning Bello's more hardened depiction of the character. Hannah's cowardly wiseacre act gets old fast, as did the bulk of the film's sense of humor; a lot of the jokes revolve around the O'Connells' previous mummy encounter, which run out of steam about thirty minutes in. Jet Li certainly doesn't seem to be having any fun here, perhaps because most of his lines are delivered as a computer-generated husk of a man. The only bright spots in the film's cast are Michelle Yeoh, as the sorceress responsible for condemning the Dragon Emperor to a living death, and the very lovely Isabella Leong, playing the daughter of the sorceress and obligatory love interest for Luke.

Despite all its flaws, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is not a total bust. I appreciated some of the action sequences (including the final battle between two undead hordes), and the cinematography is quite striking at times. However, with its bland storyline and mishmash of effects, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor comes across as much too tiring and repetitive. 

MY RATING: ** (out of ****)

(Released by Universal Pictures and rted "PG-13" for adventure action and violence.)