Back to the Library

The path that lead to us watching The Librarian 2 (2006) is twisted indeed. You may recall we watched the first Librarian movie a while ago. And I mentioned that John Rogers, of Leverage fame, is doing a TV show based on these movies - which is not on Netflix yet. So we're watching Warehouse 13 instead, coincidentally featuring Saul Rubinek and sometimes Mark Sheppard from Leverage. Well, one night, the Warehouse episode (season 2, "Buried") took our team to Egypt to find a secret collection of artifacts, so I said: "We've got to watch Librarian 2: Return to King Solomon's Mine."

We find our Librarian, Noah Wylie, settling into his role as collector and protector of mystical treasures. No longer a callow wimpy scholar, he now considers himself a badass. Back at the Library, his bosses (Jane Curtin! Bob Newhart!) send him on a mission to Casablanca to find the legend to the map to King Solomon's Mines (and offsite magic storage facility). His first step is to an archeological dig site run by Gabrielle Anwar (Burn Notice), with whom he'll fight and fall in love.

(Note: In the Warehouse 13 episode, Jaime Murray shows up for the dig in short shorts and tanktop, ala Lara Croft - since she's from the past, she depends on movies to let her know what the well-dressed tomb raider wears. Gabrielle Anwar has the same getup, but there is no lampshading of the source.)

This series is kind of light-weight, and this episode isn't even as much fun as the first (the scenes in the library are short and a little cutesy - the original Excalibur is a frisky nuisance, etc). Also, for a show dedicated to geekiness (Wylie and Anwar try to one-up each other based on the number of post-graduate degrees they have), the history, geography and mythology are pretty sloppy. Still, for me, it's like National Treasure, Night at the Museum, even the Percy Jackson movies - cute adventure stories for kids who like to read.

Anyway, after the Librarian movie, we decided to continue the Mummy vibe with The Mummy Returns with Brendan Fraser (we own this outright, so no Netflix blogging) and then the Mystery Science Theater presentation of Atomic Robots vs. the Aztec Mummy. We fell asleep through most of these. So now all the Warehouse, Librarian, Mummy and MST3K are mixed up with dreams and that's probably for the best.