Movie: Night At The Museum:
Stars: Ben Stiller, Carla Gugino, Owen Wilson.
Rating: **
"Night At The Museum" spends a lot of time revving up the engine and the bellicose characters certainly shout and yell a lot, mostly things about friendship and bonding. The front end saddles up with lots of plot elements (dad's between jobs and almost between apartments, mom's questioning custody arrangements). In other words, "Night At The Museum" certainly seemed ready to go somewhere and it made lots of noise for a couple of hours, but all the sound and the fury added up to nothing.
"Night At The Museum" stars Ben Stiller as Larry Daley, the aforementioned dad who takes the night guard job at the Field Museum of Natural History (in the movie it's called simply the Museum of Natural History) and soon finds there's more to his job then snoozing. For example, to keep the big dinosaur happy, he has to throw the bone in a game of fetch. Then there's an altercation with a monkey of the kind that "Seinfeld" did much better in far less time. Then Larry must mediate a dispute between the ancient Romans and the expansionist American West exhibits as Attila the Hun goes around plundering the other exhibits. And if an exhibit gets caught in the daylight, it turns to ashes.
And herein I think I can diagnose the problem, the jokes aren't funny. They all seem like they should be funny. Did you not laugh at first at the idea of playing fetch with a dinosaur? I did. But after five minutes or so what seemed great turns tedious. Great for those with teeny tiny attention spans. The idea of the expansionist Romans and Americans being warring neighboring exhibits seems like it should be dark, funny. And I was all lined up for it but the humor never came. I'm sitting here trying to think of ways to develop these jokes and really run with them, but I can't. Loaded with lots of ideas that should have been good ones, the movie simply stalls and sputters while banging out lots and lots of gas, signifying nothing.
Plot happens by when Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs, the "old" guard at the museum plot to rob the museum of the element that makes characters come to life at night, an ancient Egyptian tablet/scroll/spell/maguffin which, since its arrival in 1955, has so disturbed the ancient pharaoh exhibit that its nightly restlessness spreads through both the living and the wax figures. It's too bad that this scroll didn't include the secret recipe for discerning between a funny-seeming idea on paper and an actual funny joke.
Cast (in credits order)
Ben Stiller .... Larry Daley
Carla Gugino .... Rebecca
Dick Van Dyke .... Cecil
Mickey Rooney .... Gus
Bill Cobbs .... Reginald
Jake Cherry .... Nick Daley
Ricky Gervais .... Mr. McPhee
Robin Williams .... Teddy Roosevelt
Patrick Gallagher .... Attila the Hun
Rami Malek .... Ahkmenrah
Pierfrancesco Favino .... Christopher Columbus
Steve Coogan .... Octavius
Mizuo Peck .... Sacajawea
Kerry van der Griend .... Neanderthal # 1
Dan Rizzuto .... Neanderthal #2
Matthew Harrison .... Neanderthal #3
Jody Racicot .... Neanderthal #4
Paul Rudd .... Don
Anne Meara .... Debbie
Brad Garrett .... Easter Island Head (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
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