In theaters

THE MUMMY RETURNS, written and directed by Stephen Sommers, 125 minutes, rated PG-13.

Overblown, overdone, overripe and overwrought, “The Mummy Returns” is so overwhelmed by action and cheesy special effects, the film quickly becomes an unrelenting, big-budget wreck, a deafening experience whose convoluted plot and thin characters are so ridiculously sketchy, they barely register amidst all the high-tech hokum.

Directed by Stephen Sommers from a script he obviously wrote in binary code, the film hammers away at its audience with a desperation that’s so dizzying and distracting, the movie rarely becomes the rousing, satisfying adventure movie it could have been.

Every scene, every villain, every character and every computer-generated effect is meant to be greater, bigger, louder and more outlandish than the film’s hugely successful predecessor, 1999’s “The Mummy.”

On paper, that probably sounded great to Universal Studios, but on screen, it’s something altogether different. What Sommers doesn’t understand is that a movie screen, much like a drinking glass, can contain only so much.

If you overfill it, you’re left with a mess, which is precisely what Sommers – and audiences – have here.

Picking up the action eight years after the last film left off, “The Mummy Returns” follows Rick (Brendan Fraser), his Egyptologist wife, Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), and their young son, Alex (Freddie Boath), in a story that’s so painstakingly manufactured to give audiences more of the same, it essentially is the same.

The action swirls around control of an ancient bracelet that will allow the newly resurrected Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), working alongside his asp-kissing lover, Anck-Su-Namun (Patricia Velasquez), to do a whole host of evil things, such as control armies, defeat the legendary Scorpion King (the Rock, appearing for all of 10 minutes) and bring about “the next Apocalypse.” (Yes, the next Apocalypse. Sommers apparently isn’t aware that some are still holding their breaths for the first Apocalypse – but I digress.)

Since the brattish Alex has the bracelet and won’t be giving it up anytime soon, the movie swirls around everyone’s attempts to retrieve it from him. This is the film’s central plot, the one that’s supposed to drive the movie forward, but Sommers includes so many other plots and subplots in his attempt to jack the action into the stratosphere, he actually hinders his film from going anywhere.

“The Mummy Returns” is an ongoing explosion, a cinematic pi?ata that erupts from the start and continues to erupt until it finally bursts in a cloud of pixelated sand. Fraser and Weisz are fine actors who do their best to work with the material, but since that material is better left in a tomb, it’s a battle they never win.

Grade: D

On video and DVD

DUETS, directed by Bruce Paltrow, written by John Byrum, 113 minutes, rated R

At first glance, it might seem curious that a film about music would warble so painfully through its multitude of themes, be so tone deaf to its dozens of situations, and allow its characters to strike such a barrage of false notes. But when one considers that the music in “Duets” is staked on the world of karaoke, well, it all seems downright fitting, doesn’t it?

“Duets,” directed by Bruce Paltrow from a screenplay by John Byrum, follows six people traveling across the country in hopes of winning $5,000 at the national karaoke championships in Omaha. Along the way, they stop at small, dingy karaoke bars to hone their “talents,” drink boatloads of booze, swear, have sex, become stars for three minutes and, naturally, to shoot for that evening’s jackpot.

At its best, the movie offers a glimpse into a world teeming with troubled, lonely people finding solace at a microphone. At its worst, it’s a mishmash of lives colliding onstage and offstage, dramas unfolding and melodramas blooming, sentiment for the sake of sentiment. The editing, in particular, is the pits, so disjointed and awful, whatever flow the film could have had is swept out to the dark stage of despair.

With Huey Lewis as a karaoke hustler whose voice happily destroys the competition; Maria Bello as a woman whose talents in the bedroom help get her across the country; and Paul Giamatti giving the film whatever life it has, “Duets” truly goes to hell with Gwyneth Paltrow as Liv.

For some reason, Bruce Paltrow, Gwyneth’s father, has tried to pass her off as a dumb, troubled young woman who wears miniskirts and talks in a baby’s hush, but that baby’s hush is so unnatural and cloying, it only serves to work against Paltrow. Indeed, by the end of the film, I couldn’t have karaoked less about her character.

Grade: D

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Style, Thursdays in the scene, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com