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When the latest in an endless line of get-rich-quick schemes goes awry, Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) once again finds himself near eviction. And if he doesn’t find himself a job—right now—he’ll lose both his apartment and the last bit of respect that his ten-year-old son, Nick (Jake Cherry), still has for him.
The only job that Larry can find is at the Museum of Natural History—as a night watchman. The museum’s three decrepit night watchmen—Cecil (Dick Van Dyke), Gus (Mickey Rooney), and Reginald (Bill Cobbs)—are being forced into retirement, and Larry is supposed to be their replacement. It seems like a pretty easy job—until his first night, when the sun goes down, the rest of the staff goes home…and everything in the museum comes to life. The T-Rex skeleton plays fetch. The cavemen try to make fire. The tiny Aztecs shoot tiny poisonous arrows. The tiny Romans and the tiny cowboys wage war. Attila the Hun (Patrick Gallagher) seeks victims to dismember. The monkey wreaks havoc. And Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) gallops around on his horse. And it’s all because of some ancient Egyptian artifact.
So Larry is their babysitter. His job is to keep everyone inside the museum all night—because if anyone’s still outside when the sun comes up, they’ll turn to dust. It’s not an easy job, but he’s determined to make it work—so he won’t disappoint his son again.
Watching Night at the Museum brought back memories of, well, pretty much every movie that Ben Stiller has ever made. He plays the same character that he always does, just in a different movie. And therein lies the film’s greatest problem.
The idea behind the movie has been done before: a screw-up of a divorced dad trying to make his disappointed kid(s) proud, but no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t seem to do anything right. Still, the way it plays out is actually fun. The playful T-Rex is cute, and I loved the battling cowboys (led by Owen Wilson’s Jed) and Romans (led by Steve Coogan’s Octavius).
Kids will enjoy the adventure—because the whole thing about Ben Stiller being the underdog who’s trying to be a tough guy, despite the fact that he’s losing a battle of wits to a monkey, is still new to them. They haven’t seen Ben Stiller do the same schtick a million times before. And they probably won’t bury their face in their hands when Stiller’s Larry tries to save himself from dismemberment by psychoanalyzing Attila the Hun—but I did. And after the first couple of nights of the same old thing, I’d had enough. In the end, it reminded me of our childhood quest to see who could ride the Corkscrew the most times in a row: it was fun for a while, but after an hour or so, we were all ready to give up and go on the Scrambler instead.
So if your kids want to see Night at the Museum, by all means, let them go. But you might want to let them go alone.
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