THE MUMMY RETURNS
{2001}

Remember those saturday afternoon double features filled with bold adventure seekers, excitement, heroes, villains and buried treasure? Stephen Sommers' "The Mummy Returns" recaptures the feel of those celluloid romps of years past, and then tweaks it for the 21st century film audience with state of the art computer special effects. Happily, original castmembers are back for this sequel, and a few new characters are in force.

Adventurers and now husband and wife, "Rick"{Brendan Frazer} and "Evie O'Connell"{Rachel Weisz} once again are doing battle with ancient Egyptian baddies "Im-Ho-Tep"{Arnold Vosloo}, "Anck-Su-Namun"{Patricia Velazquez}, and "Annubis". As if they weren't enough trouble on their own, there is another supernatural force to be reckonned with---"The Scorpion King"{Dwayne Johnson aka 'The Rock'}. Besides those dangers the loving couple now have a young son,"Alex"{Freddie Boath} whose every bit as curious and stubborn as his parents. Luckily his encourageable uncle "Jonathan"{John Hannah} is around to help protect him when things get really scary. The O'Connells have a few other friends on hand to help, and it's a good thing because the villains have brought in re-inforcements too.

Good popcorn movie. It all makes for lots of fun of the box-office smash variety. "The Mummy Returns" raked in more than $70 million it's opening {non-holiday}week-end. I think a third installment is definitely in order.