The tagline for The Scorpion King is "Warrior. Legend. King." which is pretty funny considering it's a movie in which every character tries to sound Egyptian except for its star, who instead sounds like the King (as in an Elvis impersonator).  That star is, of course, World Wrestling Federation superstar Dwayne Johnson, better known to his inbred legion of fans as The Rock, and King is a prequel to his first big film, last year's The Mummy Returns.  For those of you keeping score, this makes King a prequel to an awful sequel of a bad remake that stars a wrestler.  If this doesn't scream “direct-to-video,” I don't know what does.  Hell, we might even be talking about direct-to-Mexican-video here.

What can someone expect from a film like this?  For starters, don't go looking for any of the real actors that appeared in the first two Mummy films (I can't believe I'm using that phrase to describe Brendan Fraser).  Don't expect special effects of the same caliber, and for God's sake, don't go looking for the same production quality, which was one of the only redeeming traits of those goofy flicks.  Instead of being filmed in exotic locales like Egypt, Jordan and Morocco, King was shot in Arizona.  It's kind of like George Lucas deciding to forego Tunisia in favor of Malibu for the backdrop of Episode II.

But here are a few things you can gleefully look forward to:  Stock characters, which include a wimpy comedic sidekick, a little kid and a really hot chick; a complete lack of blood, which means King probably has the highest body-count-to-blood ratio of any action film ever made; only one scene where Our Hero raises the People's Eyebrow; and plenty of monosyllabic dialogue from The Rock, whose typical line consists of just two or three words.  The one scene where he did manage to string together a couple of sentences felt like a Shakespearean soliloquy. He makes Schwarzenegger look like Spalding Gray. 

His Royal Rockness plays Mathayus, one of a few remaining desert assassins who, shortly after the film opens, are hired to kill the sorceress of a diabolical, power-hungry madman trying to take over everything and everyone around him.  Memnon's (Steven Brand) name may sound like an Anne Rice vampire, but he dresses, looks and acts like Maximus from Gladiator, which might fool viewers into thinking they're watching something good.  Anyway, this sorceress (Kelly Hu from Martial Law and Nash Bridges) can see into the future, which is how Memnon has been able to win battle after battle.

Instead of killing the sorceress like he was paid to do, Mathayus kidnaps her in hopes that Memnon will be lured into a one-on-one fight in order to get his soothsayer back in one piece.  That's pretty much the whole story. Along the way, Mathayus kills scores of people with a myriad of weapons, including his fists, numerous swords and knives, and even a bow, which he is able to fire fast enough to blow a human being through a stone wall (but, remember, no blood).  On the plus side, he doesn't once turn into Claymation or whatever the hell that travesty was at the end of Returns.

The very idea of a Returns spin-off is bad enough (the MTV Video Awards spoof done by Jimmy Fallon and Kirsten Dunst was a hundred times better than the actual movie), yet, in execution, King was even worse than I could have imagined.  Instead of being about Mathayus' rise to power, I thought it would focus on him being the actual Scorpion King, especially since the coolest part of Returns was the opening scene, which showed him attacking with his deadly Anubis warriors.  There is no mention of said warriors, which terrifies me to virtually no end because they're probably saving them for The Scorpion King 2.  There isn't even an explanation of why he was dubbed the Scorpion King – they just started calling him that at the end of the film.

And speaking of titles, The Rock's character once utters this line - "The people are not my problem."  Now what the hell kind of thing is that for the People's Champion to say?

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for intense sequences of action violence and some sensuality