LIBRARIAN, THE: RETURN TO KING SOLOMON'S MINES - DVD review

If you don't expect too much from a made-for-television movie, this one won't disappoint you. The 2006 TNT movie "The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines" is a continuation of the series begun in 2004 with "The Librarian: Quest for the Spear." As these titles imply, they have a lot in common with the Indiana Jones saga. Only this time instead of a college professor going off on epic adventures, it's a somewhat klutzy Librarian who has to save the world from peril.

"Return to King Solomon's Mines" hardly mines any new cinematic territory, but it maintains a lighthearted tone and passes a reasonably pleasant, if harebrained, ninety minutes under the direction of Jonathan Frakes (co-star of "Star Trek" but also an occasional director, mainly of TV fare).

Noah Wyle ("ER") plays the Librarian, Flynn Carson. Already you can tell by his name--an obvious reference to one of Hollywood's most-famous swashbucklers, Errol Flynn--that this is no ordinary librarian. And you can tell by the stuff in his library that this is not your regular neighborhood book repository. His New York Metropolitan Public Library contains things like the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, the Shroud of Turin, Arthur's sword Excalibur, Poseidon's Trident, Pan's pipes, and a host of other mythological artifacts. Maybe that's why he's not just a librarian but the Librarian. Not just anybody can take care of creations like these, and their magic takes us into "Harry Potter" territory for a double whammy of movie allusions. As I say, don't look for much in the way of originality here, just a lot of tomfoolery.

The film establishes its tongue-in-cheek tone in the opening scenes, where we find the Librarian out in the desert trying to wrest a mystical Crystal Skull from armed thugs. When his friend asks Flynn how he plans to accomplish this feat, given that there are six bad guys and only two of them, Flynn says, "Relax, this kind of thing happens to me all the time." Any resemblance between this sequence and the opening of "The Last Crusade" is purely intentional.

The next thing the movie does in its rather plodding and methodical way is introduce us to some main characters: Bob Newhart as Judson, the library's head curator, with a deadpan humor and an arsenal of tricks; Jane Curtin as Charleen, the library's fastidious, straightlaced supervisor; Robert Foxworth as Uncle Jerry, Flynn's late father's best friend; and Olympia Dukakis as Margie, Carson's overly protective mother. Apparently, Flynn has just moved out of his mom's house and into his own apartment at age thirty-two, but since he's still single, his mom is continually trying to set him up with somebody. Of all the movie's characters, though, it is Newhart who steals the show. In fact, the whole movie might have been better, and funnier, if Newhart had gone off on the adventure alone.

Finally, about a third of the way through the film, almost as an afterthought, the main plot kicks in. Flynn sets out on a quest to find the Book of Solomon, said to possess the power to bend the fabric of time and space and enable a person to rule the world. Naturally, he first has to find King Solomon's lost mines to get it, with apologizes to H. Rider Haggard and Allan Quatermain. Along the course of his expedition, Flynn meets the usual people: Emily Davenport (Gabrielle Anwar), a beautiful archaeologist and romantic interest; General Samir (Erick Avari), a villain out to get the Book for himself; and Jomo (Hakeem Kae-Kazim), a Masai warrior whom Flynn rescues. It's all pretty much by the numbers.

Even the background music is generic to these kinds of action yarns, aspiring to epic proportions but sounding unremarkable at best. In other words, it's not John Williams.

What does work, beyond Newhart's minor role, are the location shots in Kenya and South Africa, the elaborate sets, and the CGI special effects. They make the movie look like a big theatrical production rather than a made-for-TV movie, and they lend some much-needed life to the proceedings.

Otherwise, "Return to King Solomon's Mines" is all sacred amulets, tombs and crypts, secret chambers, an assortment of legendary contrivances, and an endless chain of fighting, shooting, and chasing thrown together hodgepodge in a clunky script that's fun only in fits and starts. Much of the time the action is mundane and uninvolving, and the mostly slapstick humor is devoid of many big laughs or smiles. Subtle it is not.

Oh, and for all the magical weapons Flynn has at his disposal, you'd think he'd bring along at least one of them to save the world. But, alas, with twenty-two degrees, including four PhD's to his credit, it never occurs to him.

Video:
Director Jonathan Frakes tells us on the accompanying featurette that he shot the film digitally and that some day most Hollywood studios will be shooting with a digital camera. I hope not. The results are probably just fine for television, but I'd hate to see this picture blown up to movie-screen size. The video engineers transferred the film to disc at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, just right for a 16x9 set, and they used a fairly high bit rate in the process, making the screen free of grain or noise. That's the good news. On the flip side, the colors are often too bright to appear natural, faces are usually too dark, definition is slightly blurred, and images are a touch glassy. Close-ups look best, but there aren't enough of them to count.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is quite center-channel bound. Only in the loudest musical passages do the right and left speakers have much to do. Not a lot happens in the surrounds, either, until the very end of the movie, the climactic sequence. In compensation, the midrange has the advantage of being warm and soft and easy on the ear, and the bass is punchy and deep. I don't think the music or the sound will win any awards, but they do their jobs.

Extras:
As usual, there isn't much in the way of extras on a made-for-television movie. The main item is a twelve-minute featurette, "In the Den with the Librarian's Special Effects Artists," in which the FX experts explain that they treated this film like a theatrical release instead of a TV product, giving it their best shot. However, like the film itself, the featurette doesn't contain anything we haven't seen before. Then there are trailers for "The Librarian: Quest for the Spear" and "The Closer," season two; twenty-five scene selections but no chapter insert; English as the only spoken language; and Spanish subtitles.

Parting Shots:
Yeah, "The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines" is a pretty silly affair. I suspect it would appeal mainly to viewers who are already fans of "The Librarian." Certainly, it lacks the charm, the high spirits, the enchantment, and the finesse of the "Indiana Jones" and "Harry Potter" franchises that it tries so hard to emulate. But it's TV material. What do you want?