The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor 2008

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: Hollywood could learn from the Mummy series: better to leave it buried. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: The third installment of the Mummy franchise, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, is by far the weakest. Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: For a movie about the undead, this lacks any supernatural chills, and by the time its obligatory final showdown arrives, it seems as hollow as the terra cotta soldiers brought to life by CGI. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The best news about this clangorous clunker is that it may well have vanquished the Mummy franchise. Read more

Mark Rahner, Seattle Times: If movies were people, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor would be a total bimbo: nice-looking and kind of fun sometimes, but so unbearably empty and dumb that it doesn't matter. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: Dragon Emperor doesn't exactly beg for a sequel (neither did The Mummy Returns, for that matter), but it'd be fun to watch the filmmakers try to outdo this dizzy spectacle in the arena of sheer ridiculousness. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: Possibly the most fun Mummy yet -- call it The Uber-Mummy. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Despite exotic locations, epic cinematography, and much spectacular crash and bang, this Mummy feels like a threadbare toss-off. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: If it weren't for all that inept banter, this might have been a different film indeed. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The film has one objective: to smack its audience in the face with fleeting, competing wows, over and over. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: It's serviceable summer twaddle, but you might as well see Hellboy II: The Golden Army -- similar plot, much better film. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Anyone looking for a terrific summer popcorn movie should not hop on board. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: While plenty of arrows zing, few of the wisecracks or familial confessions in Alfred Gough's and Miles Millar's script hit their mark. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: You've seen it all before. You don't want to see it again. It will hurt your head and lay waste to your soul. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Fraser, who at 39 looks perhaps five years older than this kid, needed a wholesome offspring-sidekick like a third arm. Then again, it's not clear that the world needed a third Mummy movie. Read more

Laremy Legel, Film.com: Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: If this sounds absurd, it is. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: Technically, Jet Li's Emperor Han is pottery not putrification -- he's such stuff as Pier 1's are made of -- but that doesn't stop this franchise from resurrecting a third sequel. Read more

Vadim Rizov, L.A. Weekly: Strange how dreary it all is, and how tired Fraser seems. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: As the shape-shifting baddie, Li spends most of the movie running around under extensive digital makeup, which renders his casting pointless, since it could be anybody under there. He also, at one point, turns into a giant three-headed dragon. No, really. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Though it tries to juice up its mojo with currently popular Asian themes and martial-arts sequences, this Mummy seems a teeny bit musty. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: This movie wasn't so much created as calculated. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: 'Here we go again,' sighs adventurer Rick O'Connell in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and he's not the only one to notice that things are starting to look awfully familiar. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: What's with outsourcing mummies to China? Do the undead work for lower wages there? Did Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon take place on the Nile? Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The action beats are the same as the earlier Mummys -- with planes, guns, digital creatures and vast armies of the risen-dead having at it. The missing ingredient here seems to be the fun. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Full of exclamatory one-liners ripped from a copy of Indiana Jones for Dummies, and with the breathless cast spewing putatively witty rejoinders that get drowned out by pows and bangs, Mummy 3 should have been kept under wraps. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Now why did I like this movie? It was just plain dumb fun, is why. It is absurd and preposterous, and proud of it. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is more of the same -- and yet less. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The Mummy series has been dead for a long time, but like the mummies it depicts, it won't stay buried. Read more

Christy DeSmith, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film's best quality is that it continues the Mummy tradition of mocking its own big-budget gratuitousness. Read more

Jennie Punter, Globe and Mail: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor marks the sad end (we hope) to a franchise that delivered two solid, highly entertaining, summer popcorn-munchers, both superior to the second Indiana Jones flick. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The story is no more than a thread stitching set pieces of increasing implausibility and ineptitude. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: This Mummy movie is really two movies: a good adventure epic, with all the Chinese people, and a wan one, with O'Connells and the other the Westerners. Read more

Hank Sartin, Time Out: Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: Making the farcical tenor of the recent Indiana Jones film feel like a paragon of dramatic and archaeological integrity, this phoned-in action threequel doesn't even have the good grace to deliver on its title and feature any mummies Read more

Mike Clark, USA Today: Remarkably, the plot has much in common with Hellboy II: The Golden Army, yet that bundle of fun has enough vision to make even its Barry Manilow interlude seem appropriate. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Given the must, dust and rust emanating from this third installment, it's clear the time has come for this Mummy franchise to be truly mummified once and for all. Read more

Jane Horwitz, Washington Post: Tiresome and messy, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor borrows mightily from the Indiana Jones franchise and various martial-arts films, but it doesn't do what those films did nearly as well. Read more