Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I taped the second showing of TNT's original movie "The Librarian: Quest for the Spear" (a broadly tongue-in-cheek spoof of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the super secret agent genre) Sunday night, and quite enjoyed watching it on Monday. I see that it's also being re-run on TNT tonight at 9:15 Central/10:15 Eastern time, as well as at 10:45 PM Central time on both Friday and Sunday nights (Dec. 10 and 12) and numerous other times (I'm assuming) in the near future.

I probably would've given it a miss, going by the TV GUIDE review (which was fairly scathing), but fortunately I'd already read this more informative and (to my mind) accurate review on the "Sci-Fi Weekly" website: http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue397/screen.html

The film certainly had its weak spots, and didn't make adequate use of Kyle MacLachlan as the arch-villain, but I just got such a kick out of seeing Bob Newhart playing an action hero and Noah Wylie as the perennial grad student who discovers there IS a practical use for all that "impractical" knowledge he's spent his life pursuing, that the flaws didn't matter so much.

When you come right down to it, I think the biggest thrill was just hearing everyone in the film speaking of "The Librarian" in tones of awe and respect (not even The Librarian is allowed to bad-mouth The Librarian!). Of all the un-sung heroes in contemporary culture, the librarians who toil in our public libraries and public school libraries are surely high on the list of 'most deserving of an epic ballad and least likely to get a Presidential medal'. So it's just really satisfying to see them finally get to save the world (as they do in small ways every day when they stand up for freedom of information and knowledge over ignorance) in an epic fantasy way!

[update: thanks to dettiot for the "Librarians!" icon, which I got via missmurchison!]