notdempsey

Were I to try and explicate every aspect of "Sahara," based on number 11 of novelist Clive Cussler's best-selling 'Dirk Pitt Adventures,' you would be faced with a review rivaling Dostoyevsky in length. Rather, I offer a laundry list of the things this mastodon of a movie crams into just over two hours: A treasure hunt, a plague, a diabolical plot, slavery, genocide, global disaster, not one, but TWO civil wars, and Mathew McConaughey's southern twang.

All these things come together in a climactic desert showdown between the 200-year-old cannon of a Confederate ironclad and an African dictator in a helicopter straight from the scrap-yard of 'Black Hawk Down.' And by the way, the ironclad is in the middle of the desert, and it's filled with treasure, and has landed right near some verboten solar energy plant that, much to the dismay of Greenpeace, produces some sort of toxic sludge that is leaking into an underground river, slowly poisoning the world's water supply. Oh, and the cannonballs, well, they explode.

If the audience with whom I watched 'Sahara' laughed at this, I couldn't tell over the action. That's not a negative statement, either: I LITERALLY wouldn't have been able to hear laughter over the explosions, engines, and toe tappin' soundtrack of golden oldies and cool tribal pop.

Maybe that's a good rule for Michael Bay to consider before signing off on one of his quiet, trademark love scenes: Will the audience be able to hear each other laughing? If not, put the love scene in the middle of a tornado…an exploding tornado!

In terms of acting, this is McConaughey's final exam: The cowboy has been on the verge of stardom since he made Atticus Finch look like George Wallace with his soulful closing argument in the Jim Crow legal drama 'A Time to Kill,' but he's yet to gain membership to that 100 million dollar club where he'd rub elbows with Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford. Stephen Holden of the New York Times blames the Texas-boy's pseudo-stardom status on that prairie-dog accent of his. But then how do you explain Hillary Swank's winning streak? Ain't she po' white trash, too? Personally, I blame the actor's chiseled features. He is ridiculously good looking. His face is perfect and rubbery in that artificial way that has proved troublesome for Ben Affleck and will probably prevent 'Memento's' Guy Pierce, who could cut diamonds on his cheekbones, from becoming a major player any time soon. Like a picture hung to break-up a pristine, white wall, so does that scar on the chin for the otherwise flawless Harrison Ford, that nappy hair for Tom Hanks, or Clark Gable's Dumbo-like ears, give us a point of reference when gawking at these Adoni.

I must admit, however, that McConaughey proves, in 'Sahara,' that he has the star quality needed to command the respect of a major action picture, even surrounded by the intimidating likes of William H. Macy and Delroy Lindo. Penelope Cruz also does just fine as a U.N. style doctor who's investigations into an Nigerian epidemic get her tangled up with Dirk Pitt and his roughnecks, led by a trucker-chic Steve Zahn. Many people find Cruz's thick accent frustrating and difficult to decipher, but she really has a beautiful voice, one that you become hypnotized with in some of her Spanish-language films including "All About My Mother" and "Open Your Eyes," where you can experience it in it's natural habitat. In English, the accent acts as a kind of camouflage; if any of her American performances have been artificial, I wouldn't know, because EVERYTHING she says in English sounds artificial—the artificial of someone who's learning the language, however, not necessarily of a bad actress. Moreover, it gives her characters…um…character. And…well…it's kind of hot.

So far I've embraced and spoke kindly of this film's ludicrous plot. It would be disingenuous, however, to call 'Sahara' flawless--even relative to other action movies. It's quite odd really: Not once did I doubt, or was I bothered by, the absurdity of 'Sahara' until somewhere around the end of act II, when McConaughey, Zahn, and Cruz discover, quite by accident, the verboten toxic solar plant. From here on out, the film abandons the fun of Indiana Jones for the predictability of James Bond: the gang is captured, the girl held prisoner by the evil millionaire as he discusses the specifics of his master plan, and the fortress set to blow up as said millionaire scurries away cowardly. But why were these scenes so distracting? Why is a hidden solar energy plant so much less credible than a battleship buried in the desert? Maybe the real James Bond movies own the market on high-tech bunker scenes.

It isn't surprising that 'Sahara,' goes all Bond in the end, though. After all, there are 17 other Dirk Pitt novels, and director Breck Eisner and Paramount aren't shy about wanting a 007-length franchise (From the poster: "Adventure has a new name. Dirk Pitt," from the movie: "Maybe you could help us (the CIA) out from time to time"). But while the 700 page 'Sahara' is a relatively long Dirk Pitt adventure, few of them fall below the thickness of the Oxford English Dictionary; if every one of these movies will be as chock-full as 'Sahara,' I may need to start bringing MetRx bars with me to the theater.

Early in "The Mummy Returns," sequel to Universal's 1999 blockbuster remake "The Mummy," charming American swashbuckler Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) fights a cadre of decomposed Egyptian corpses on the back of a London double-decker. Also on the bus is Rick's wife/scholar Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), to whom he laments, "This is bad!" "We've had bad before," Evelyn replies. Rick: "This is worse!" Indeed! As is the whole of "The Mummy Returns," a film so ludicrously over the top and blindly made that even after Warner Brothers' dismal "Wild Wild West" featuring jets retrofitted to a flying bicycle, this film put the jets on a flying boat.

Explaining the plot of "The Mummy Returns" in detail is about as necessary as cooking directions on Pop-Tarts: Ten-or-so years after the events in "The Mummy," Rick and Evelyn must search the globe for their son Alex (Freddie Boath) who, after trying on a bracelet that was actually an ancient artifact belonging to a Babylonian-era warlord named The Scorpion King (The Rock), becomes a human map to a mythical oasis where The King awaits an opponent who, if victorious, will take control of his armies and have the power to rule the world. The kidnapper was none other than Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), the eponymous ghoul and former high priest thwarted by O'Connell in the first film, now resurrected by the voluptuous Meela Nais (Patricia Valasquez), reincarnation of Anck Su Namun, the ancient beauty whom Imhotep shared a fatal affair with thousands of years ago. The evil pair plan to find the oasis and defeat The Scorpion King, and thus, like a biblical Bonnie and Clyde, set the whole gory story into motion.

And those are just the broad strokes! Along the way we encounter the usual hoards of faceless, black-cloaked baddies with guns, the not-so-usual undead soldiers, and the flat-out weird and nasty little pygmy-mummies--everything coated with the oh-so-easy-to-swallow zombie in-jokes of ghouls bobbling their own decapitated heads.

All that said, "The Mummy Returns" maintains all the fun of its predecessor (if only at the expense of any dignity the franchise had left.) This is a movie that knows it's bad (and boy is it bad!), that knows it's the ultimate product of the Hollywood machine--and is damn proud of it! It's undeniably great to see O'Connell leap and tumble his way out of ridiculously overwhelming odds--literally one wrong step from being horribly gored in front of his child. At the film's climax, O'Connell is engaged in a battle against the new and CGI improved Scorpion King (complete with giant scorpion legs and torso). As I watched Brendan Fraser (and/or his stuntman) dodge the unstoppable claws of the rendered-Rock's intimidating mandible, it occurred to me that I hadn't seen such wickedly intense choreography of actor and CGI since Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Moore tangoed beautifully with a pair of hungry velociraptors in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" (another enjoyable franchise-destroyer). For "The Mummy Returns," VFX supervisor John Andrew Burton Jr. and a very extended team brought this sequence to life.

Fraser has always plunged headfirst into roles that even the most work-starved actor might shy away from ("Encino Man," "Looney Toons: Back In Action," "Monkeybone"), and does so with such enthusiasm that we never feel embarrassed for him. Here he embraces Rick O'Connell in all his two-dimensionality where others might abandon the role, and the character survives because of him.

Joining Rick and Evelyn are Evelyn's unscrupulous-yet-lovable bro Jonathan (John Hannah) and the melodramatic guru-warrior Ardeth Bey (that dude with all the Arabic writing on his cheeks, played by Oded Fehr), who also serves as the film's interim historian, giving us any and all back story needed without all the bother of exposition or creative storytelling. An enjoyable chemistry and timing has developed between these actors in just two films. There truly is a sense of camaraderie; We find it quite easy, for example, to accept Jonathan's momentary turn of seriousness toward the end of the film after two acts of comedy because the other actors know just how to respond to him (Hannah is possibly the best Scottish actor alive, see "Sliding Doors").

Of course, the bulk of the film is lighthearted, and any melodrama is taken with a grain of salt--not least of all by screenwriter/director Sthephen Sommers, who plays up the group-fun-breeziness that worked so well with the first mummy movie; Upon seeing the forbidden bracelet on Alex's arm, Ardeth decrees grimly, "By putting on the bracelet, you have started a chain reaction that could bring about the next apocalypse." Fraser looks at Ardeth, "Hey, you, lighten up." I suppose that's Sommers' best and only defense against critics like Peter Travers of Rolling Stone who (justifiably) called his film "A p!ss poor mummy movie indeed that doesn't deliver a damn thing worth preserving."

"Hey, Peter, lighten up."

"The Flying Car" is a lukewarm redux of the infamous "Uncle Walter" scene from Smith's debut film "Clerks" (1994)--the one that takes place as Dante and Randall, a pair of 20-something convenience store employees, drive to the wake of Julie Dwyer, one of Dante's old flames, and get into some...unique...conversation en route. When introducing the short on The Tonight Show in 2002, Smith, in jest of using existing characters, told host Jay Leno he was "going back to the well." How right he was! Not only the characters, but the entire dynamic of the short and its dialog are derivative of the "Clerks" scene. Both involve the two in a car where Randall, the more wickedly sardonic of the pair, engages nebbish Dante in an absurd argument (his ability to suck his own penis in "Clerks," and weather or not he would allow a mad scientist to remove his foot in exchange for a levitating automobile in "The Flying Car.") Both pieces are anecdotes--a setup by Randall against Dante. And, in both cases, Dante falls for it hook, line and sinker.