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| Cast: Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson and Robin Williams | | Director: Shawn Levy | | Genre: Comedy |
Anupama Chopra, Consulting Editor, Films
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is a sequel to the 2006 hit Night at the Museum. These are kiddie movies about museum pieces at the American Museum of Natural History in New York coming to life thanks to the mysterious powers of an ancient Egyptian tablet.
So, you have a T-Rex, wooly mammoths, Pochahontas, Teddy Roosevelt and a Roman General all in the same frame. This time the pieces are shifted to the Smithsonian, one of the largest and most prestigious museums in the world. And the action includes a Jeff Koons balloon dog, a Degas ballerina and a magical moment in which our hero, Daley the night guard, played by Ben Stiller, enters the iconic Alfred Eisenstaedt photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse. So you might ask, what’s not to love?
Try everything! The script is incoherent. A busload of talent is wasted – Robin Williams makes a brief appearance, Owen Wilson spends most of his screen time buried in an hour-glass and the wonderful British actor Steve Coogan looks like he just wants to pick up his paycheck and run.
The computer-generated action is so frantic that it leaves you exhausted.
The few genuinely comic moments are provided by Hank Azaria playing a wicked pharaoh, who is chasing the tablet so that he could conquer the world. Azaria with a lisping, British accent is superbly funny. At one point, he asks Darth Vader: what’s with the cape? Are you going to the opera?
But mostly this night feels long and tiresome. The non-stop parade of creatures might amuse the kids. See it only if they insist.
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