The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines (2006)

The second entry in TNT's Librarian franchise finds Noah Wyle's Flynn Carsen dispatched from Utah to Casablanca to the Serengeti in pursuit of a map, a legend piece, and a book that grants its reader dominion over time and space. Jonathan Frakes directs with the composure of a man who knows his budget and respects it. The result is a breezy cocktail of dopey action and broad laughs, and it is entirely content to be a Saturday night diversion. Nobody involved appears to be reaching for anything grander.

On the matter of social consciousness, the film is a mostly blank slate, which reads as honesty more than oversight. The ensemble is naturally multiethnic: Hakeem Kae-Kazim as the guide Jomo, Erick Avari as the scheming General Samir, Zahn McClarnon in support. The film never pauses to congratulate itself for the arrangement. Jomo is a stock local guide repaying a debt, not a thesis. Gabrielle Anwar's Emily Davenport holds more degrees than Flynn and does much of the intellectual labor, which is generous for the genre in 2006, but she remains a sidekick and a romantic destination. Race, class, climate, and identity go unremarked. There is no sermon, and no lecture.

None of this is a complaint. The film won a Saturn Award for Best Presentation on Television, and it earned the honor by doing exactly what it set out to do. A sequel can be judged as a sequel, and this one carries its franchise obligations lightly. For those of us who catalogue cultural markers for a living, the picture offers slim pickings and a clean conscience. It is a heist picture with mummies, a bedtime story for adults, and it leaves no fingerprints.