Review in a Hurry: Mummy mia, here we go again! This unnecessary sequel finds floppy-haired explorer Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) battling the resurrected Emperor Han (Jet Li) of ancient China. Despite the new setting, new adventure and new castmembers—including the wife-swap of Maria Bello—it still feels like they're beating a dead mummy.

The Bigger Picture: What's that funky odor wafting off the screen? Musty tombs and rotting corpses? The "funk of 40,000 years"? Stink, er, think again. It's the stench of stale plotting, cheesy CGI, cadaver-stiff acting and a decaying franchise that the studio keeps digging up. Ah, the smell of desperation...

This time around, young archeologist Alex O'Connell (Luke Ford)—son of retired adventurers Rick (Fraser) and Evelyn (Bello)—accidentally rouses the ruthless Dragon Emperor (Li) from his undead slumber. Millennia earlier, sorceress Zi Yuan (Michelle Yeoh) placed a curse on the evil monarch and his warriors, entombing them in clay for all eternity—or until some schmuck breaks the spell. Now he's ba-a-ack and hell bent on world domination, 'natch.

Because the script says so, the emperor has otherworldly powers and can shape-shift into digitized monsters. None of this makes him an interesting villain. Imhotep in the previous Mummy movies was at least a tragic figure, yearning to reunite with his soul mate.

Alex's mummy and daddy are summoned from England to help out, and the O'Connell clan reunite to take down the bad guy. The fam's far-out Far East adventure leads them to the Himalayas, in search of Shangri-La, where immortal Zi stands guard and a few awful CGI yetis lend a helping paw. Really.

Sure, there's action throughout, and it's kinda fun watching armies of the undead fight to the undeath. But what's lacking life here are the human characters. Fraser is...Fraser; Bello (replacing Rachel Weisz) stumbles on her prim British accent; John Hannah (as Evelyn's brother) does little but make yak jokes; and in the soggy romance subplot, bland Ford scores zero chemistry with Isabella Leong, who gives some truly terrible line readings.

Perhaps it's time to let sleeping mummies lie.

The 180—a Second Opinion: Lovely, talented Yeoh is always a welcome addition, and in the last reel, she and Li engage in a too-brief swordfight. With these two in the cast, there should've been a lot more mano a mano martial arts.