It's a good idea to bring a friend if you go to see the big climactic action scene of the new "Mummy" movie. That way, you can have someone nudge you awake when you start to nod off.

"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" perfectly exemplifies what happens when a movie franchise loses all reason to exist. Although there might still be some interest in the audience (until they watch it), it is sparklingly clear that no one involved in making the movie cares about it anymore. At all.

The previous two "Mummy" movies were never particularly well made, but at least they approximated a sense of fun. "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" is joyless.

If it were just the case of a tongue-in-cheek action-movie franchise going to the well once too often, resulting in a creatively threadbare, soul-depleted, inorganic and slightly depressing shadow of what made the first film so appealing, this mummy film would merely be another "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

But "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" is worse than that film, which it greatly resembles, because it doesn't even go through the motions right.

The franchise's most valuable asset is Brendan Fraser's engagingly goofy adventurer Rick O'Connell. But this movie turns its camera on Fraser for less than two minutes of the first 25. And even after that, he's not seen nearly as much as he should be.

Instead, the filmmakers pin their aspirations on Luke Ford as Rick's son, Alex. But, and there is no delicate way to put this, Ford is a terrible actor. Try as he might - and we see the strain in every frame - he cannot bring himself to speak beyond a deadly monotone.

And then, writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar think it would be a good idea to have Alex somewhat estranged from his father, so the two can reconcile heroically at the end. Honestly, isn't anyone else sick to death of that incredibly overused subplot?

After a convoluted prologue, the story begins with Alex discovering the tomb of a Chinese emperor who, because of a Sanskrit curse, has been turned, along with his army, into terra cotta. Rick and his wife (Maria Bello, utterly defeated by her English accent) are in China, too.

The ongoing civil war is never mentioned, but somehow the story expands to incorporate several yeti, Shangri-La and an inordinate amount of special effects. It doesn't make sense, and it doesn't have to, but it also does not manage to keep our interest in any way. The action scenes are particularly leaden, filmed by director Rob Cohen in a way to make them as incomprehensible and unexciting as possible.

In "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," it's the franchise that has been mummified.