I, for one, cannot fathom the need for extending a franchise about mummies nurturing resentment and wrath for millennia on end, but I suspect I am in the minority. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor will be considered by some a cluttering of chaotic special effects irritatingly proud of how expensive they are. Those who want to see a mummy, a tomb, a dragon and an emperor spearheading two hours of loud mindless fun will be pleased to high heavens. As a film proudly aiming to milk the movie-going budget of those who enjoy the Indiana Jones films, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is adequately successful and does its job in an unspectacular and workmanlike way. This is hardly cinema that touches the heart, but on a level of providing the steam-off after-hours visceral kick it is second to none, even the recent reincarnation of its fedora-wearing whip-wielding inspiration. The link with Indiana Jones is cheerfully highlighted by the same writing gambit, which graces the latter’s recent adventure. The Mummy’s resident archeologist with flair for adventure Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) is also provided with a son as a young sidekick. Here this does not pay off just as well, as young Alex O’Connell (Luke Ford) is conspicuously unexciting and is as much use as an adventure companion as a chocolate teapot.

There are several notable changes from the previous two installments in the franchise. Evelyn, Rick’s wife and sporting accomplice in all exploits is no longer played by Rachel Weisz. She is replaced by the similarly overqualified Maria Bello, who always suggests that she deserves to be in a better movie, even when struggling with the physical aspects of the part.

The movie’s story is moved from Egypt to China, which provides it with a fresh and abundant batch of visual possibilities. The Chinese mummy comes in the form of the Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) who once had designs on immortality and world domination, but was cursed and put in a permanent state of limbo between life and death by a sorceress named Zi Juan (Michelle Yeoh) who once had the ill taste to spurn the emperor’s love.

This may sound a bit confusing, but the gist of it all is that the shape-shifting emperor is unwittingly freed from the curse and is soon back to his old self – summoning an army of 10 000 slumbering warriors and scheming to conquer the world, not yet realising that a spear-wielding hoard of undead is hardly a world beater circa 1946 when the movie’s story is set. There are amazing sights, a trip to the Himalayas, a lavish Shanghai soundstage and what have you.

The visual abundance is fuelled by the conspicuous extravagance of the enterprise. This is the most expensive installment in the franchise, and the movie boasts about this at every opportunity. It is an unbridled orgy of special effects and pixels throwing all caution and decorum about pertinence to the story to the wind, but the admirable thing is that the movie is cheerfully proud of it. As such it allows you to enjoy in a silly, uncommitted way the emperor’s transformation into a three-headed dragon, a climatic battle between the emperor’s army and zounds of slave skeletons, although director Rob Cohen (xXx, The Fast and the Furious) makes all the action too chaotic and disorienting for my liking. All in all, you can have a lot of fun, as long as you calibrate your expectations accordingly. Or you can be bored to death; you know best which side of the fence you are sitting on.