May 28, 2009: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Night at the Museum was a movie aimed at kids, which turned out to generate enough charm from both an intriguing idea and great performances from the all-star cast to propel it to big box-office returns in 2006, prompting an inevitable sequel. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian revisits our protagonist a few years later in his life arc, and takes the film’s action to the appropriately grand setting of the Smithsonian collection of museums in Washington, D.C.
Ben Stiller, in the first film, played a hapless night security guard at a museum in New York City, where as it turns out all of the diorama models and many of the artifacts come to life every night thanks to the powers of a magical tablet, and they run around and create chaos. After several nights of trying to keep things under control, Stiller makes peace with the troops and becomes the best-loved security guard ever at the museum. Three years later, he has gone on to the entrepreneurial success and wealth he had always dreamed of, and is tied to his Blackberry. When the magical artifacts in the museum get in touch with him as their last hope before the collection is split up, sent away and possibly destroyed, he reluctantly returns to help.
Many of the old characters return, including those played by Robin Williams, Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan. Additionally, we now have Amy Adams, adorable as Amelia Earhart, Bill Hader well-cast as General Custer, and Hank Azaria awkwardly playing an ancient Egyptian king/pharaoh trying to take over the museum by gaining control over the tablet which brings life to them all. Azaria is aided by Ivan the Terrible and Al Capone.
This is good light entertainment, which amazingly stays away from the bathroom humour so prevalent in today’s kids’ movies, and Stiller keeps his annoying mannerisms to a minimum. The museum setting makes it easy to bring a bit of an educational angle to the proceedings, which is nice. Overall, the movie is amusing but really not as funny as it could have been. Stiller’s constant checking of his Blackberry seems forced, though that’s a weakness in the writing and not an issue with his performance. The viewer is expected to know the back story, and the sequel really doesn’t explain it in any detail at all, though as I’ve noted before I prefer that to spending a huge amount of time rehashing details. Don’t rush out to catch this one, but you don’t need to steer clear of it either.
OK sequel to OK earlier film.
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