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rating)
Viewed at Pacific Place
Rated PG-13; running time of 93 minutes
Genre: Action/Adventure
Written by: David Hayter, Will Osborne, Stephen Sommers
Directed by: Chuck Russell
Cast: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Steven Brand, Kelly Hu, Michael Clarke Duncan, Grant Heslov, Peter Facinelli
WARNING - SPOILERS BELOW.
The Digest
5,000 years ago, the evil Memnon (Steven Brand) was tearing across the land and destroying everyone and everything in his path. He has aspirations to rule all of Egypt and will stop at nothing. The cards are in his favor because he has the help of Cassandra (Kelly Hu), a beautiful sorceress, who can predict the outcome of his battles. Obviously when she tells him that it will not fall in his favor, he won't attack and therefore he's on a winning streak.
There are 3 tribes left and they are in hiding. The tribes are lead by Queen Isis (Sherri Howard), Balthazar (Michael Clarke Duncan) and the father of Takmet (Peter Facinelli) and against the wishes of Balthazar the tribal leaders decide to hire the Akkadians to deal with the problem known as Memnon.
The Akkadians are a tribe whose members are trained from birth to be assassins. They'll kill anything for a price. There are only 3 left - Mathayus (The Rock) and his two brothers. They are supposed to enter the camp of Memnon and kill the sorceress and thus take away the advantage that Memnon has and hopefully the tribes will be able to ban together and kill Memnon. Well of course once Mathayus lays his eyes on Cassandra's boob job... er face, he can't resist her and rather than kill her, he takes her hostage.
Has Mathayus under estimated the power of Memnon? Has he under estimated how important Cassandra is to Memnon? Memnon will stop at nothing to get Cassandra back, can Mathayus stand up to an enraged Memnon or will he perish like the rest?
The Dish
Throughout this entire movie, my husband kept giving me a dirty look each time something incredible stupid happened. This went on until I finally said, "Hell I can't fix it and it's too late now anyway!" Lord knows I would have loved to fix it especially since I'm a huge fan of The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. But, truthfully, I'm pretty sure I couldn't have fixed it no matter how hard I tried. One of the elements of the first two movies that makes me love them so much is the larger than life enemy. I love Imhotep and all of his evil creatures. That was completely missing from King. Who wants to see two humans fighting in the desert? I want to see the Army of Anubis again. I want to see Mummies come back from the dead and kick butt. I want to see a huge battle scene. This is what I've come to expect from this franchise and all of this was missing.
If that's not enough, the acting was really sub par. Surprisingly it wasn't The Rock who had the problem. It was everyone else around him. Even Michael Clarke Duncan made me want throw popcorn at the screen. To make matters even worse, they writers threw in characters that had no depth (well none of them had depth, but these characters were worst than the rest.) and no real point for being there in the first place. Takmet turned out to be such a jackass, but it is never explained why. He wasn't the only jackass - Memnon was a huge one, but we never know why. We never find out why there are only 3 Akkadians left. There is a nutty professor kept closed up in the palace. Why? He didn't add much to the story at all except he introduced gunpowder to the characters.
Perhaps if they had included some groovy special effects and killed the WWF rock music, I might have been able to "feel" King. Sadly, it's too late now.
I will say this much, I did find it funny when I was supposed to and even enjoyed the sidekick. But that's about it. And as bad as it is, I will be purchasing it on DVD to add to my collection. It will find a happy home during "Bad Movie Night at The Diva's House."
The Directive
This movie will be enjoyable for those of us who are 12 years old or who like to act 12. With the music, The Rock, and Vince McMahon as executive producer, wrestling fans should get a kick out of King too.
You think getting stung by a scorpion hurts? Try watching The Scorpion King.
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Copyright Kamal "The Diva" Larsuel-Ulbricht, 2002
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