Should there be a moratorium on resurrecting movie franchises after more than five years? “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” makes a compelling case for leaving well enough alone and allowing fondly remembered movie franchises to lie peacefully in their cinematic sarcophagi. Instead, after seven years, Brendan Fraser and crew are dragged from their restive slumber by an ancient Hollywood curse (also known as a contract) for this third mummy-filled outing. This time, there’s some kung-fu fighting between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, along with a parade of yetis and a three-headed dragon to sweeten the deal. But even with all that hot monster action, “Tomb” feels like it should have been called “The Mummy 3: Contractual Obligation.”

That’s not to say contractual fulfillments can’t be at least a little fun, and “Tomb” has big, stupid mummy glee to spare. Picking up more than a decade after the events of “The Mummy Returns,” “Tomb” finds adventurers Rick and Evelyn O’Connell (Brendan Fraser and Maria Bello) living in semi-retirement in the English countryside. But a life without battling the undead is just no life at all, and the two jump at the chance to deliver an ancient Chinese artifact to Hong Kong on behalf of the British government. Meanwhile, their son Alex (Luke Ford) has just unearthed the tomb of Emperor Han (Jet Li), the Chinese emperor who built the Great Wall and who just so happened to be turned to stone as part of some curse 1,000 years earlier. The O’Connell family meets up at a museum, but the strained family reunion is interrupted by a rogue Chinese general (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang), who uses the artifact the O’Connells delivered to resurrect the emperor and set him loose upon the world. Along the way, there’s a car chase, some fireworks, a few gunfights, some monsters and, of course, mummies.

It’s sort of exhausting, and even Fraser, so casual and laid-back in the first two movies, comes across as worn out. “Here we go again,” he grumbles as Emperor Han returns to life and starts shooting fireballs, and you can tell that even Fraser can’t believe he’s in another “Mummy” movie. Fraser and the always reliable John Hannah, as Evelyn’s avaricious, snarky brother, are the only two cast members to return from the first two movies, and it feels as though breaking up the team that made the first “Mummy” films—including director/screenwriter Stephen Sommers and actress Rachel Weisz, who starred as Evelyn—gave “Tomb” some sort of mummy fatigue syndrome. Even Jet Li looks kind of bored, despite the addition of super mummy powers—and the ability to change into a dragon and a monster out of “Where the Wild Things Are”—to his usual kung-fu ass-kickery.

To jazz it all up and, presumably, to keep Fraser awake, director Rob Cohen packs in as many action set pieces as humanly possible. Some are thrilling and fun. A car/horse chase through the streets of Hong Kong during the Chinese New Year gives the movie a much-needed rush of adrenaline early on. But others are just so excessive and over the top that they take the movie from fun to funny. During a showdown between the O’Connells, Emperor Han and some Chinese soldiers at a mystical temple, Alex’s sword-fighting girlfriend Lin (Isabella Leong) summons some yetis to aid in the fight. It’s all well and good until a yeti kicks a soldier square in the ass and boots him over an archway—and another yeti signals a field goal. If a yeti-versus-mummy fight needs to be bolstered by gags like this, then something has gone terribly awry.

But maybe that’s all part of the joke, since there are plenty of moments in the film when Fraser and the rest of the cast seem to directly acknowledge the absurdity of it all. All the self-referential moments take the wind out of the movie, and instead of being a breezy adventure tale, it feels like a chore. There are plenty of side-discussions about mummies—how annoying they are, how they don’t fight fair and so on. Alex makes a crack about his dad’s mummy fighting skills, to which his father replies that he killed the same mummy twice, which is sort of like killing two mummies. “Tomb” could be the source of a great drinking game, where you take a swig every time a character says the word mummy. You could also do the same thing reading this review.

Cohen, Fraser and the rest all manage to bring it together for the climax, though. There’s a giant battle between the Emperor’s Terracotta Army and the reanimated bodies of the slaves and soldiers the Emperor killed thousands of years earlier, along with a climactic wushu battle between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. It’s a big-budget riff on the Deadite battle at the end of “Army of Darkness,” complete with some skeleton-slapstick moments, and it’s the one sequence that captures the easy, assured pulpy fun of the first two movies. That spark comes a little late, but clearly not late enough to prevent a fourth “Mummy” flick, as a coda at the end informs us that mummies have just been discovered in Peru. The only question is whether there’ll still be enough life left in the old bones when “The Mummy 4: Mummy Harder” stumbles into the multiplex some distant summer from now