The Curse of King Tut's Tomb (2006)

A three-hour-long made-for-TV movie. Now that's usually too much of the 'good' stuff, certainly if you know Casper Van Dien is starring in it. And yes, it's a bit of a mess, this film, especially script-wise. But there's enough evil shenanigans going on in it to keep it all mildly entertaining. Too much stuff going on, actually, because in the end you're likely to go "What was all this about again?". Casper Van Dien plays a third rate Indiana Jones out to collect the 4 parts of an ancient tabloid which were scattered around the world to protect mankind, for he who possesses all 4 of them combined, has the power to unleash great demonic evil upon the world. There's this secret society, The Hellfire Council, that already has 3 of the 4 pieces. Van Dien discovers the 4th one in the hidden tomb of King Tut. All bets are off from then on, with the Hellfire Council on his tail to steal the 4th piece and Van Dien & his buddies eventually even passing through an inter-dimensional portal to the land of Ancient Demons (or something) to go wake up sleepy King Tut to help battle the Forces of Evil. It's a whole heap of amusing nonsense juiced up with crappy CGI. Malcolm McDowell is running around in it as the head of the Hellfire Council, not doing much else than simply being the head of the Hellfire Council. Villainous Jonathan Hyde plays Van Dien's nemesis. And beautiful Leonor Valera is too cute as the archaeologist chick & Van Dien's love interest. The whole thing was clearly made to appeal to fans of Universal's blockbuster hits "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns". It goes without saying that it doesn't deliver the same kind of 'quality entertainment'.

While I hesitate to call movies Indiana Jones ripoffs, this one isn't even trying to hide that fact. It's fairly blatant. The acting is sub par, but not terrible. The special effects (about which I normally don't care) are disgustingly bad. The plot line is absolutely ludicrous. In fact, I still can't believe I watched the entire thing. It's not even a fascinating ridiculousness; it's just crap. The action sequences are almost always tacked on with no relevance or importance. A notable example is when the antagonist has a supporting character captive in his car and is going to kill him. The captive escapes and they spend several minutes in an attempt at an exciting chase scene across rooftops only for the antagonist to catch him and kill him anyway. Nothing new was gained from the chase, only time wasted. I would go into further detail but it has been a while since I've seen this title, and I've tried to block most of it out of my mind. As such, I shall stop this review now.

Just so you know, I allude to the ending. Read on only if you feel this review will not spoil it for you. I don't think it will. After setting through this yawner, at the end you think that maybe you will see a little action then it ends with "to be continued". What is up with that? The plot is a rip-off of "Indiana Jones" and "The Mummy". It had virtually no originally. It did have good potential at the beginning then died a slow painful death; the writer fell asleep at the switch. What was the director thinking? I am a movie junkie however I really am disappointed. The quality of the production was good. I think that if they might have been better of making this a trilogy and warn you a head of time. Maybe their intent was to end this a "cliff hanger" but when a movie is this long the audience should be rewarded with a little more exciting end. If you are asking yourself, "Will he watch the next installment?" The answer is yes, if there is one. I have to. I can only hope that I will be rewarded for my tenacity.

This is not "The Lord of The Rings" by any means and is not even the best work of Director Russell Mulcahy. And there were far too many natives of India trying to pass as Egyptians. Having said that I found this film to be good escapism entertainment if you realize that they are not trying to present any kind of historical fact. One of the best ways to sum it up is to imagine Indiana Jones on the cheap. Casper Van Dien is always fun to watch once you accept his natural cockiness and are pulled into his ability to be comic and serious at the same time.Johnathan Hyde is always excellent either as hero (ala "Richie Rich) or as villain, and he seems to be fated to play these evil archaeologist types recently. And Malcolm McDowell is always superb. But the winner in this film was the sets, props and the soundtrack. The film was worth that alone. Still, a tighter shot film in a shorter time frame might have made it all work better. Not Oscar material by a long shot, but worth the time if you have nothing better to do.