In Theaters — “Double Jeopardy”

Bruce Beresford’s action-adventure film “Double Jeopardy” is a prime example of how a film can nearly be ruined by theater previews and a badly handled television advertising campaign.

If you happened to catch the trailer or the ads, then you know going into the film much of what will happen (if you don’t know or don’t want to know, don’t read farther).

The film follows Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd), a woman who seems to have it all — a great husband, great son, great family, great life — until she wakes in the plush suite of her new boat to find herself covered in blood. Hubby Nick (Bruce Greenwood) is nowhere to be found, but there’s a bloody knife on deck which Libby conveniently picks up just as the Coast Guard conveniently roars through the fog to catch her holding it.

Sent to prison for murdering Nick, Libby eventually learns he’s not only alive, but that he’s shacked up in a swanky city with her sister (Annabeth Gish) and son. That’s got to hurt, but don’t fear. The film goes into overdrive when Libby learns she can’t be tried for the same crime twice. Apparently, as the film’s title suggests, she can kill her husband in plain sight without fear of repercussions.

In a film that begs audiences not to think, not to question its ridiculous premise or its blatant plot holes, “Double Jeopardy” eventually offers its biggest cliche yet: When Libby is paroled, her parole officer is none other than Tommy Lee Jones, who walks headlong into stereotype by reprising the same performance he gave in “The Fugitive” and “U.S. Marshals.”

As badly realized as all this sounds, the film isn’t a complete wash. Judd’s performance is good, the film looks great, and it has a few fresh, genuinely compelling moments that aren’t given away in its advertising. But when a film is this brazen in its contrivances, audiences might find it a bit easier to sit through if they first belly up to a bar — and pour themselves a double.

Grade: C-

On Video

“The Mummy”

Stephen Sommers’ high-tech remake of Karl Freund’s “The Mummy” misses what made the original 1932 film so effective — its subtlety, its spooky atmosphere and its moving performance by Boris Karlof.

The film stars Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell, a dashing Foreign Legionnaire of the 1920s who accidentally discovers the Egyptian city of Hamunaptra.

Knowing that buried beneath the city is a fortune in Egyptian loot, O’Connell teams with a beautiful librarian named Evelyn (Rachel Wiesz) and her boozy brother, Jonathan (John Hannah), to retrieve the fortune.

The catch? The fortune is fiercely protected by scores of zombies, flesh-eating scarab beetles and an evil mummy called Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) who’s capable of all sorts of mayhem.

Sommers’ special effects are top-notch, and Fraser is once again solid, but the film is an unoriginal pastiche of other films, including “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad,” “Hellraiser,” the Indiana Jones series, the swashbuckling films of the 1930s and, incredibly enough, even “The English Patient.”

There are other problems, most of which stem from Sommers’ illiterate script, which features dialogue so lame, the characters should have just kept mum. But the main problem is the mummy itself, which is less a character than it is a walking bucket of hissing gray spaghetti.

Unlike Karlof, who conveyed a complexity of emotions in spite of the bandages that bound him, Vosloo’s monster wears no bandages and conveys only rage. For prepubescent boys, that’ll work just fine. But for those seeking a bit more from mummy, well, this mummy is a bit too dead and buried to suit.

Grade: C+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear each Monday and Thursday in the NEWS, each Tuesday and Thursday on WLBZ’s “News Center 5:30 Today” and “News Center Tonight,” and each Saturday and Sunday on WCSH-TV’s statewide “Morning Report.”