I haven't watched the other TV movies with a New York librarian moonlighting in the vein of Indiana Jones, 007 and the heroes of The Mummy and Romancing The Stone, but because it's the Spooky Season and I like librarians I watched the 2008-released The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice on DVD with a number of brief Special Features about its making. The 90-minute movie is unrated in the U.S. and has a M in Australia, but it's probably fine for pre-teens who enjoy exciting adventure stories touched by the supernatural as well as CGI, although one scene has implied sex and there's some violence.

Basically it's a playful movie set in this century, filled with a pretty goofy librarian spouting trivia nobody cares about while sword fighting, a lovely, 403-year-old female vampire with a stash of blood in her refrigerator, an old, crippled professor who isn't who he pretends to be, some Russian thugs and the librarian's bosses played as you'd expect by veteran comics Bob Newhart and Jane Curtin.

I could tell this was a TV movie by the occasional gaps in the action as happens after a commercial break, which irritated me, but the production design has been critically lauded and it did seem fairly impressive. Filmed on location in and around New Orleans, people who love the area will enjoy this as well. I can't compare it to the previous movies in the series about a spear and King Solomon's Mines, but Noah Wylie of TV's ER doesn't have quite the presence of Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Brendan Fraser or Michael Douglas. He does look bookish, though. I also wasn't enamored with the sudden passionate romance here in direct contrast to the Douglas-Turner romance I could really enjoy.

Briefly this third of The Librarian series has our unlikely hero suffer a meltdown when asked by his bosses to take on another assignment of retrieval for their library's collection of ancient artifacts. They placate him with a vacation, such as New Orleans, and after losing another whiny girlfriend he deserves it and goes, but soon winds up involved in an adventure involving the elusive Judas Chalice stashed somewhere in the area. The silver chalice (didn't Paul Newman debut in a movie of that name?), as legend has it, was given to Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver and hung himself and now is considered the world's first vampire. His chalice can revive Vlad Dracul, the Russians believe, and an undead army could restore Russia to its former glory, but first they must deal with the librarian and his friendly vampire girlfriend who only continues to live to protect the hidden chalice from bad guys.

This is a decently entertaining movie for Halloween directed this time by Jonathan Frakes of Star Trek: TNG fame, I think. I laughed at times, but it seemed at most a typical fantastic adventure with a slight twist at the end that I appreciated while others who love vampires may not. Stana Katic played the thoughtful girlfriend convincingly, sharing her history in short flashbacks, and Bruce Davison was creepy enough as the professor who really is..., well, somebody playing the Russians as fools. I also enjoyed seeing New Orleans' night life, the swamp and a cemetery. A deadpan Newhart and frantic Curtin didn't have a whole lot of scenes, but enough for me.

Older kids (and not just according to age) will enjoy The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice the most. It might be just the family entertainment you're looking for this weekend.

This is an entry in the Sleeper-free Lean-n-mean write-off. For more entries please see http://www.epinions.com/user-jurgrace.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD