Night At The Museum 2: MSN Review

These historical cast additions include Robin Williams’s avuncular president Teddy Roosevelt, Owen Wilson’s tiny cowpoke Jed and Steve Coogan’s diminutive Roman Octavius, not to mention a huge dinosaur skeleton and a mischievous monkey called Dexter. This time, though, there’s an awful lot more to play with, the original’s single museum having been replaced by the 18 institutions that make up Washington’s gigantic Smithsonian complex.

 

You can see how this might have appealed to director Shawn Levy and returning co-writers Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, who doubtless felt that having more mannequins and objects to tinker with would exponentially swell the opportunity for fun and excitement. If anything, sadly, the opposite is true, the wealth of possibilities proving more of a hindrance than a help to a film that doesn’t know how to assemble its disparate elements into a coherent, amusing whole.

 

As the story begins, we quickly learn Larry has left his old job behind to forge a new career as an inventor of such helpful knick-knacks as a luminous torch. This does not go down to well with stuffy curator Ricky Gervais and the rest of the gang back at the Natural History Museum, who accuse him of deserting them just as they are all being boxed up and shipped off to the Smithsonian archives. No sooner have they arrived, though, than the ancient Egyptian amulet that gives them life – cheekily half-inched by Dexter – works its magic on its exhibits too, placing them at the mercy of an evil Pharoah (Hank Azaria) with plans to rule the world.

 

Stiller naturally races to their aid, rushing headlong into a host of trouble involving an angry giant squid, numerous animated paintings and various figures from the near and distant past. These include Napoleon Bonaparte, Al Capone and Attila the Hun, all of whom are only too happy to assist Azaria’s Kah Mun Rah. Fortunately for Larry, help is at hand from Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams), the resourceful Transatlantic pilot who flies to his rescue on more than one occasion.

 

Hectic, frenetic and deafeningly loud, Night at the Museum 2 will no doubt appeal to the sort of hyperactive tot who wouldn’t be allowed 10 feet within a real one. Anyone older, though, is likely to be aggravated by the film’s wasteful accumulation of details and characters, the vast majority of whom barely figure after their initial introduction.

 

What makes this so frustrating are the isolated moments when Levy does capitalise on his picture’s fantastical potential – notably an extended sequence where Ben and Amy hop in and out of such iconic artworks as Alfred Eisenstaedt’s VJ Day Kiss and Grant Wood’s American Gothic. For the most part, alas, this is one Museum you can’t wait to get out of.

Deluged by special effects and laboured comic shtick, this Night is definitely not one to remember.

 

 

Search For Cinema Listings With Live Search