OxfordPress.com

Grade: C+

Verdict: Come smell what the Rock and his pals are overcooking.

Details: Starring The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) and Michael Clarke Duncan. Directed by Chuck Russell. Rated PG-13 for intense scenes of action violence and some sensuality. One hour, 28 minutes.

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Review: There is a single moment in “The Scorpion King,” the expensive cast-off from the recent money-making, head-bashing “Mummy” franchise, when everything goes exactly right.

Our muscled hero, pro wrestling's the Rock, smashes into a harem and after a good gander at all the well-toned curves, finally gives his movie audience what it's been looking for — the People's Eyebrow.

Rock's trademark bit of over-the-eye hair arches up in an amazing bend of muscle control and full-on camp. At that moment, in a preview earlier this week, the audience went nuts. They hollered. They busted guts. They clearly wanted more.

Alas, it's not to be.

For all the money spent on “The Scorpion King” (roughly $60 million), mostly for CGI effects — armies that overpopulate the horizon, hissing cobras, flaming swords and a rather unconvincing, blowhard sandstorm — the movie lacks bite.

Oh, it's watchable enough. Even more so than its bullet-train predecessor, “The Mummy Returns.” But in a sword-and-sandal epic like this you want the kind of low-budget camp that makes the Japanese “Godzilla” flicks so much fun, the kind of dazzling, intricate, fly-high fight in a Jet Li or Jackie Chan movie that makes your eyes pop, the kind of runaway adventure that juiced Johnny Weissmuller's “Tarzan” vine-swingers.

What you get in “The Scorpion King” is just sheer brute force. Nearly 90 minutes of it. Rated PG-13 and spiced with glimpses at female skin, there are more bruising brawls with clanging swords, zipping arrows and sledgehammer fists than anybody can count. One fast-cut fight leads to the next with an ear-piercing soundtrack of extra-loud grunts, wallops and thuds.

It's no different than watching mountain rams butt heads. You can get the same effect stopping by the convenience store, grabbing a Big Gulp cup and filling it with Red Bull.

But you want to know what the movie is about.

So do I.

The last time I left a theater and didn't have a clue what just went on, the movie was called “Charlie's Angels.” Fun flick. But a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

I can tell you this. “Scorpion King” is a summer movie sneaking in two weeks ahead of “Spider-Man” to soak up as much box office as it can get. It's a prequel to a sequel that has little to do with the Scorpion King character introduced in that sequel. The Rock played him the first time around, too, but this time, thankfully, he never morphs into that silly, multi-legged stinger. (He's still got the People's Hair Extensions. And, for what acting the film requires, the wrestler pulls it off.)

As the movie opens, we're eons ago in history when at least some of the people walked around with grass placemats on top of their heads, when formidable — and requisite curvy — Amazons snarled while manhandling guys, when the world's ultimate evil-doer in, one guesses it must be Egypt, spoke with an English accent.

The Rock's trusty steed is a camel. He and his two bros are, in effect, “The Last of the Mohicans.” And he's got to save the planet from the Brit with the bad mullet.

There's an enticing sorceress. A back-to-the-future wacky scientist. Electric guitars from time to time on the soundtrack.

And plenty of overblown lines. Like this one: “Rivers of blood can never bring peace.”

No they can't. But they can sure stoke a weekend box office.

— Bob Longino, (none)