The vicious emperor (Jet Li) calls his long lost warriors to battle in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Universal Studios

Apparently having exhausted the audience’s taste for Egyptology, the producers of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor have set their film in China just after World War II.

The film is an over-produced spectacle that’s crammed with lots of fiery chases, battles between a pair of computerized armies, booby-trapped tombs and a search for the pool of eternal life in Shangri-La, a magical land hidden in the snow-covered mountains of the Himalayas. Think of Mummy 3, as some are calling it, as a combination of the first two Indiana Jones outings with The Lost Horizon and the 2002 Chinese martial arts epic Hero.

Huge it is, complete with an eye-popping, neon-bright Shanghai street scene during Chinese New Year’s in 1946, a few years before Mao Ze-Dong and his Communist allies took it over and turned everything drab. It’s an intoxicating sight. Nevertheless, in the early dazzling martial arts display by Jet Li, I felt that I’d seen it all before, only with a greater since of fun and abandon, in Kung Fu Panda.

Well, Brendan Fraser, back again as archaeologist Rick O’Connell, does add his usual, amusing, double-take touch to the action.

The only thing missing in Mummy 3 is horror. Scary thrills should be a hallmark of mummy movies, but that’s an ingredient that’s sorely lacking and missed here.

The battle sequences and chase scenes staged by director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx) are as predictable as clockwork. Worse, there are so many close-ups and quick cuts from second to second that it’s often difficult to figure out who is doing what to whom. A chase through the streets of Shanghai that ends in a cascade of fireworks is impressive and yet surprisingly not very thrilling because it all seems so contrived. A climactic battle between an evil emperor’s terra-cotta army that has magically sprung to life and a group of heroic skeletons leaves one wondering which side is which as these brown figures clank away on a brown field.

Mummy 3 (thus nicknamed because it’s the third mummy film to star Fraser since 1999) is yet another one of those tales about the mythic and epic battle between good and evil, as we’re told in storybook fashion at the start by an off-screen narrator who turns out to be Michelle Yeoh, a plus in any movie. For his treachery, the emperor is cursed by a witch to spend eternity as a stone statue in his tomb, guarded by his soldiers who have been turned into life-sized terra cotta figurines. (The basis for this, apparently, is the discovery of an actual not-quite-life-sized terra cotta army that was unearthed in central China decades ago.)

But Rick’s 20ish son, Alex (Luke Ford), an archaeologist himself, discovers the long-buried emperor’s tomb. This leads to modern-day Gen. Yang (Chau Sang Anthony Wong) from trying to end the curse and bring the emperor back to life with the help of a magical diamond amulet and waters from the pool of eternal life in Shangri-La. Unfortunately for Rick and his wife, Evelyn (Maria Bello replacing Rachel Weisz from the first two films), they’ve agreed to come out of cushy retirement at their British estate and transport the amulet to Shanghai.

What follows is non-stop mayhem as the general and his cohorts try to grab the amulet in adventures that rage from the streets of Shanghai to the mountains of the Himalayas. There is a good deal of fun in this, especially a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style boobytrapped tomb with stuff falling from the ceiling, tiny dragon figurines shooting arrows and the floor opening up into a yawning pit. Fun, too, are the trio of Yetis (Abominable Snowmen) who come to the rescue during a Himalayan ambush.

Happily, John Hannah is back as Rick’s brother-in-law, the only other survivor from the previous Mummy movies, to provide his brand of “can-you-believe-this?” comic relief.

Fraser looks fit and ready to tackle the world, even Jet Li’s ruthless emperor, and Bello adds the Nick and Nora Charles touch to their archeologist adventurers. Fraser lends a comic touch to his character. He has one of the film’s funniest lines when, as the emperor comes to life, he frantically screams, “There’s a mummy on the loose!”

Yeoh combines elegance and martial arts athleticism with a keen intelligence. But Li, encased much of the time in computerized stone, has not much more to do than be an angry presence while the colorless Ford doesn’t raise temperatures in his romance with Isabella Leong, whose character holds a key to the story with a 2,000-year-old secret.

** 1/2The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Starring: Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Michelle Yeoh, Luke Ford, Liam Cunningham, Isabella Leong.

Rated: PG-13, contains violence.

mjanuson@projo.com