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Beef and cheese
[Photo: Universal Studios]
Mathayus (the Rock) and Cassandra (Kelly Hu) are being pursued by Memnons’ army in The Scorpion King. |
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 18, 2002
The Scorpion King is not a good movie, but the Rock has learned the lessons of pro wrestling well: Phony business can be entertaining if you bring a sense of humor to it.
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It's been a while since anyone in Hollywood dared to make a movie so transparently cheesy as The Scorpion King. Even longer since we've been introduced to a side of beef as impressively untalented as the Rock, a pro wrestler who may wind up being the next Schwarzenegger.
The Scorpion King is a prequel of sorts to The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, which utilized bigger budgets to rip off a classic 70-year-old movie. Suffice to say that you won't see anything new here, just less pretension of greatness. Everyone involved with this project, especially the Rock (nee Dwayne Johnson), is perfectly content with making a mediocre movie as fun as possible.
If that means putting contemporary words in B.C. mouths, so be it. No money for monsters? That's okay, just add some milky-blind eyes to villains drinking from the skulls of their victims for grotesque touches. The Mummy flicks had flesh-eating beetles, but we can make do with stampeding fire ants. Check a GWAR garage sale for costumes. And those hits' signature dust storms with the demonic, computer-generated faces emerging? Forget the faces and let's just allow the dust to hide clumsy slaughter choreography with suggestively squishy sounds.
Yet, there's something mildly endearing about all this shoddiness, a nostalgic reminder of days when effects weren't so special and a severed head looked more like a Halloween prank than a reason to barf. The Scorpion King is a bad movie, make no mistake, but it wears its incompetence with pride.
The plot -- actually an alibi for brawling -- concerns Mathayus (the Rock), the last of the Acadians, a tribe wiped out by the soldiers of Memnon (Steven Brand). Mathayus wants revenge, and the easiest way is to kill Memnon's sorcerer, the source of his power. But the sorcerer turns out to be lovely Cassandra (Kelly Hu), who can turn a blanket into a J-Lo fashion statement. You can smell what the Rock is cooking when he sees her and lifts that "People's Eyebrow" from his WWF gig.
But, you know, the Rock has something going for him. His chiseled 6-foot-4, 275-pound physique is one thing that will keep him working in films, but the self-awareness behind it makes the Rock an agreeable screen presence, not just a freak. He continually joshes himself and the movie he's in, knowing it's junk but never admitting it or winking to convince the audience. A convincing glare and acrobatic masochism are the tools of his wrestling trade, but there's also a sense of humor underneath that savage earnestness, not unlike a past warrior named Conan. And we know what happened to him.
The Scorpion King
- Grade: C
- Director: Chuck Russell
- Cast: The Rock, Kelly Hu, Michael Clarke Duncan, Steven Brand, Grant Heslov
- Screenplay: David Hayter, Will Osborne, Stephen Sommers
- Rating: PG-13; intense action violence, sensuality
- Running time: 91 min.
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