Crummy Movie Cavalcade: Brendan Fraser Double Feature

Look, I always kind of liked Brendan Fraser, even if I never took him seriously as a movie star, and I even felt sorry for him a few years back when a tabloid printed a picture that appeared to reveal the dude was seriously thinning up on top of the ol' scalp. I don't know why, but I worried about his viability as an action hero when I saw that.

I suppose I would have been more worried had I actually seen his two big summer movies: "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "The Mummy: We're Back Yet Again." In fact, had I actually seen "Journey," (the movie, not the band), I might have spared it a spot in the Crummy Movie Cavalcade. After all, it was shown in 3-D, and really, if the 3-D is halfway decent in a film, I'm getting at least some kind of entertainment value out of it.

But I avoided it because the more I learned and saw of "Journey," the more I feared the 3 D's stood for "Dumb," "Dull," and "Desultory." Like how I came up with that third one?

Actually, seeing the band Journey in 3-D would likely be more entertaining than yet another take on the evergreen Jules Verne story--but only if it Steve Perry is at the helm, natch. I'd love to see Perry wailing, "ooh, he's touching anotherrrrrrr," in an attempt to sonically bore a passageway to the center of the earth. "Journey to the Center of Earth," however, is likely to simply bore US (Saw that one coming, didn't you? It was nowhere near as clever as "desultory," I'll grant you).

The makers of the flick tried to fool moviegoers by offering the 3-D gimmick and by hoping dedicated "Mummy" fans would get confused and think the third installment in that franchise was hitting theaters early. But what of that "Mummy" sequel? Hasn't the caravan trotted off on that one by now?

I knew this series was sunk as soon as I read that Rachel Weisz was out and a teen sidekick was in. Again, I feel for poor Brendon Fraser. This is not a geriatric Harrison Ford needing a credible young'un on screen to share the stunts. This is a guy not yet out of his 30s (OK, it's close), and the implication that the movie needs some Rick Jones wannabe to suck up to the CW set is offensive enough to keep me far away from this movie. The fact that he's playing Fraser's son doesn't help.

Well, that and the fact that the second movie stunk and I don't have a desire to see another one.