Rotten Tomatoes
Movie Info
A "professional student" lands a truly remarkable job in this witty made-for-TV fantasy adventure. Flynn Carsen (Noah Wyle) is a 30-year-old graduate student who has managed to collect a whopping 22 university degrees; despite his brilliance, shy Flynn seems to have a hard time with the real world, and his mentor at school finally has him expelled so he can start putting his knowledge to work. Things are not much better for him at home, where his mother, Margie (Olympia Dukakis), wants him tomeet a nice girl and settle down on his own. Needing a job, Flynn finds an unexpected opening with the New York Metropolitan Library, where Judson (Bob Newhart) and Charlene (Jane Curtin) hire him to look after a special collection. And a very special collection it is -- unknown to the world, the library has been caring for the world's most precious relics, including the Holy Grail, Pandora's Box, the Golden Fleece, the Sword of Excalibur and the Mona Lisa (the real one...turns out the Louvre only has a copy). It isn't long before Flynn learns how dangerous his job can be when he's approached by Lana (Kelly Hu) and Rhodes (David Dayan Fisher), members of a secret underground mob known as the Serpent Brotherhood who happen to know that Flynn is the new guardian of the Spear of Destiny -- and will stop at nothing to take it from him. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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Noah Wyle plays Flynn Carsen, a perpetual college student who has 22 academic degrees.[2] Carsen’s professor kicks him out of college, telling Carsen that he lacks real life experience and needs to experience life outside of college. Carsen’s mother, Margie (Olympia Dukakis), is constantly worried about her son and encourages him to get a job, find a bride, and be happy.
Carsen receives a mysterious invitation for an interview at the Metropolitan Public Library. Shortly after Carsen’s odd but successful interview, he is shown the true duties of his new job by a doleful library employee, Charlene (Jane Curtin), and library head Judson, (Bob Newhart). The position of librarian, Carsen’s new job, is said to have existed for centuries. Its purpose is to protect historical and often magical items in a secret section of the library. Some of the items Carsen is responsible for are Pandora's Box, Tesla's Death Ray, the Holy Grail, the transmuted corpse of King Midas, the Ark of the Covenant, the Golden Fleece, a live unicorn,the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs, Excalibur, the original Mona Lisa (of which the Louvre version is said to be a copy), the original "Little Boy" prototype atomic bomb, a working jet pack, Ali Baba's Flying Carpet, and the Spear of Destiny.
Carsen finds that the job entails more than he expected when one of three parts of the Spear of Destiny is stolen by the evil Serpent Brotherhood (members played by Kyle MacLachlan, David Dayan Fisher, and Kelly Hu). Whoever has the complete Spear of Destiny will control the destiny of the entire world (it is said in the film that "Hitler had only one" piece of the Spear). Carsen must now track down the remaining two pieces of the Spear of Destiny to prevent the Serpent Brotherhood from possessing all three pieces and gaining control of the world. His only tools are his mind and a book written in a previously untranslated language called the "Language of the birds".
Whilst on a plane, Carsen is ambushed by the Serpent Brotherhood and is rescued by a woman who forces him out of the plane whilst in mid-air. Once they land, he finds that his rescuer, Nicole Noone (Sonya Walger), is a Library employee who blames herself for the death of the last librarian but resists any friendly feelings for Carsen. They travel through the Amazon rainforest, where they encounter waterfalls, headhunters, bridge collapses, and Maya death traps, all with often tongue-in-cheek comedy and a touch of romance. But they are captured by MacLachlan and the Serpent Brotherhood. Making a deal to find the last piece of the spear and spare Nicole's life, they next travel to the Himalayas, ending up in Shangri-La, all the time proving that Carsen’s years of book learning are useful.
At Shangri-La, they receive that last spear piece and flee while the temple collapses from taking it. When Flynn and Nicole arrive at a hotel, she gets him drunk and he passes out. Unfortunately she is kidnapped and the spear pieces are joined at a place where a powerful electromagnetic field of 15 on the Schumann Scale is during a full moon. That place is a pyramid with a golden capstone. Eventually though, Flynn defeats Wilde when the capstone falls on him because of a displaced support stone and Flynn reclaims the spear in the name of the Library.
The film closes when Nicole comes to Flynn, saying that the 'Death Scorpion Cult' has their hands on H. G. Wells' Time Machine (a real time machine, and not the novel) while Flynn comments on why these groups have insect names.
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