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Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 2006 film The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines.
Story
This felt a lot more forced than the first one. Instead of well placed foreshadowing, it was extremely trope-ridden. The archeology parts were fun, the love story worse than the first, and the twists were so predictable it hurt.
Score: 0
Characters
Generic Middle Eastern general, silly twist character, dead dad, and almost better than the Librarian archeologist. Again, the only characters I liked were Flynn, Judson, and Charlene. Although Flynn was a little annoying.
Wait, actually, despite the “Noble Savage” trope, I enjoyed Hakeem Kae-Kazim’s Jomo. Especially his wry delivery.
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
The fighting banter between the love interests was cute but got old fast. The actual archaeology-babble was fun though. The near Spider-man repetitiveness of the “sometimes you need to give up what you want for the greater good” was overdone.
Score: 0.5
Visuals and Music
The location shoots were absolutely beautiful when in the wild. Those in the cities had that ridiculous colour filter that American movies love for the Middle-East and Africa. It’s not an alien planet… sigh.
The special effects were better, and less used, but still terrible. The camera work wasn’t as good as the first one and tended to be a little indulgent of the landscape.
The music was fun and I enjoyed the magical pan-flute playing the Librarian theme.
Score: 0.5
Fun
The entire love story really sapped some of the fun for me. I did enjoy it mostly and both kids were enthralled again.
Score: 0.5
Overall
A weak sequel that spends too much time trying to make us fall in love with the love story and not enough with the actual characters making us care about them. It’s predictable and awkward, but has some sights of what this franchise could become.
Final Score: 2 Stars out of 5