Content area
Full text
"Malcolm in the Middle"
(Fox Channel 11; 7:30 tonight, if football cooperates)
Think: Hal (Bryan Cranston) has a unique theme for his holiday decorations: Pearl Harbor Day. And the family heads to see "Mamma Mia!" Boy, do complications ensue.
Don't think: How many other sitcoms would turn a plot on a barrage of bird excrement? "Malcolm's" brain trust is either brilliant or utterly diseased.
In a nutshell: Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) and Reese (Justin Berfield) getting jiggy with "Dancing Queen" is a classic moment in a routinely funny series.
"The Five People You Meet in Heaven"
(ABC Channel 7; 8 tonight)
Think: Mitch Albom's treacly best seller, about a grizzled amusement- park worker (Jon Voight) killed in an accident who discovers in the afterlife how much meaning his life actually had, is transformed into a treacly teleflick.
Don't think: The rare film that takes longer to watch than the book it was based upon took to read.
In a nutshell: Lovingly, elaborately, even cleverly produced, but let's just say there was a reason that Albom's newspaper generously refused to run the review of his book that it had commissioned.
"The Librarian: Quest for the Spear"
(TNT; 8, 10 and midnight tonight)
Think: An over-educated geek (Noah Wyle) is transformed into an Indiana Jones-style scholar/adventurer, protecting rare, even mythical antiquities. Bad guys grab a sword that controls, yes, the fate of the known universe. Guess where that takes us.
Don't think: Everyone knew...