April 2002
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ENTERTAINMENT

The Scorpion King: Movie Review
By Lesley Tse, Grade 12, Father Michael McGivney School, Markham, Ontario

The Scorpion King
(Click on photo to enlarge)

Remember last year's sequel to The Mummy, and how many viewers were surprised to find out that it wasn't as bad as expected? Well, don't have the same expectations for the prequel of the same movie. Some couple thousand years before the first Mummy movie, The Rock stars as Mathayus, looking for revenge against the evil king Memnon for beheading his brother. Attempting to kill Memnon, Mathayus sneaks into his castle but instead, finds the king's sorceress, Cassandra (a mostly barely clothed Kelly Hu). She agrees to plot against Memnon, and along their quest we learn that she's been held as his prisoner, being used to help him guide his victories through her mystical visions.

The main story can basically be summed up as this: There is an evil king, a man hates the evil king, and man tries to destroy the evil king, end of movie! Of course, that is an extremely compressed version, because I haven't mentioned the scenes of gratuitous nearly-naked shots that use as many excuses possible to get Kelly Hu wearing as little as possible (it just so happens that Mathayus' second time meeting her is when she's taking a bath).

The only real concern you'll have while watching probably won't be for the characters, but that Hu's strategically placed flowing locks will be caught in a breeze and end up showing more than what's allowed in a PG-13 movie. There's something about desperately trying to cram together blood and guts with scantily clad women without any real, solid plot that just doesn't make a great movie! But I digress: Scorpion King has its funny moments, and it does the job as far as going to a theater and shelling out $11 to be entertained. The writers knew that the plot couldn't possibly be taken seriously and was scripted to be fun, so they mixed in a couple lines meant to bring out giggles, and tried to hide the story (or the lack thereof) with quick-paced action, featuring martial arts combined with ‘Rock-isms' (the raised eyebrow, etc).

Unless you're one of those people who absolutely adores The Rock and just can't stay away from movies that don't make sense, but is forgettable yet fun, then I would recommend you to wait for the DVD release. I would give this movie 2 out of 5 stars.

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