For me, IMAX movies succeed most when they're educational as well as entertaining, when they're as much for the mind as the eyes.

Being big just isn't enough -- especially at a theater connected to the very smart Indiana State Museum.

The latest IMAX film there, "Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs," proves informative and fun in its adventurous investigation of the history of Egyptian mummies.

A documentary using live-action dramatizations shot at gorgeous Egyptian locations, "Mummies" is a combination of Indiana Jones and the Discovery Channel that keeps people of all ages paying attention.

Spending time with present-day researchers, late-19th-century archaeologists and ancient Egyptians, the film frames a phenomenon that people have found fascinating for more than a century in clear historical and cultural contexts.

Narrated by Christopher Lee, who appeared in the original 1959 film "The Mummy," this 40-minute IMAX movie unravels the mysteries behind how the mummies where embalmed and where they were hidden -- and eventually found.

Complete with tomb raiders and hidden treasure, the story behind Egyptologists discovering a mother lode of pharaohs in the late 1800s is especially interesting.

While appealing to kids, "Mummies" isn't dumbed down below an adult level.

I learned plenty while watching and was especially intrigued by part of the film that connected the mummies with our lives today.

The film explains how modern-day scientists made their own mummy to help figure out where DNA could be found in ancient ones.

The hope is that we can learn from examining the DNA of the mummies and the infections -- like malaria -- that may have killed them.

The whole idea of mummification was to preserve the body for going back into action in the after life.

While that plan didn't work out so well, the pharaohs have achieved an immortality of sorts as their DNA survives for use by scientists, and their story lives on for the rest of us.