ajasys

I see a lot of putrid reviews here, in spite of the fact that the TV ratings made The Librarians the most watched cable show debut in 2014, & the hundreds of votes that give it an IMDb rating of 8.6, so I'm guessing the posters who's reviews denigrate the premiere were expecting something else than what we got: An introduction to the world of The Library and those who will care for it...and humanity at large.

As a huge fan of Leverage, which was created by the same team at Dean Devlin's Electric Entertainment, including John Rogers and their dynamic crew, the two-part premiere gave me just what I wanted - and expected.

The birth of any show requires a lot of "pipe" (exposition) as all the characters have to be introduced, the basic storyline(s) laid out, and the world the characters live in has to be defined.

I found the new characters to be very interesting, and my four teenagers have already fallen in love with Lindy's Cassandra, mostly because they are fascinated at how a synesthete can survive real life. I found Rebecca Romijn's Eve Baird to be the least fleshed out of the leads; she didn't have enough to do that define her strengths and weaknesses, but given Devlin & Rodgers' recent track record I'm confident we'll learn more and more backstory as each new episode unfolds.

Can this show reach the heights that Leverage did? That remains to be seen, but it certainly started in a good place.

I see many reviews here that denigrate the film, and a few that celebrate it. I believe it deserves neither fulsome praise nor vitriol, as it is a somewhat better than average film betrayed by bad choices.

I'll keep this short: The concept is decent, the execution is mediocre, the result is that I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

I would have graded this far higher had the creators spent more time making several of the characters more human (which is funny, given that "humanity" as compared to a more machine-like existence is a core concept of the screenplay), but they didn't. The only character in the film who achieves anything like true humanity is Bruce Willis', and this occurs only because the plot requires it.

When a film's construction and leverage depend on the very definition of humanity as it's core concept, leaving the humanity of most of the characters behind is something more than stupid -- it cripples the film.

This doesn't mean the film is unwatchable; it has enough elements of action, pathos, suspense & revenge to make it worth your time throughout.

But it could have been so much better, if not for so many poor choices.