Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

Ben Stiller strikes a pose, and I try to remember if the cube in the background came to life in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

As Posted on Jackcentral.com on May 28, 2009

by Gary Sundt

Nonsense in filmmaking bothers me. When I see something that just plain doesn’t make a lick of sense, I shift uncomfortably in my movie chair. I lean over to my girlfriend to make a snide remark about the stupid things happening in front of me, and she goes, “C’mon now Gary! It’s a movie! It doesn’t have to make sense.” Most movie critics and I disagree with this sentiment, and in that case, we are in the minority. This explains why I think Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is a stupid movie, and also why it will make a ridiculous amount of money regardless.

However, what it doesn’t explain is why I even remotely liked this movie. And I did, to my complete mortification.

I felt this same bit of embarrassment after the first Night at the Museum. It was a dumb movie, a film I thought was really just not very good, but it had this mindless charm that made me smile. The sequel is very similar. It is an absolute product of the Hollywood system, an idea designed to make cash. I can imagine the pitch meeting: “Let’s take a bunch of famous historical figures that everybody knows, characterize them solely by their images in popular culture, and pit them against a loveable yet cantankerous night guard.”

“How do we accomplish such a task?” asks the intrigued movie executive.

“Some random Egyptian tablet will bring ‘em all to life,” replies the writer or director or 8-year-old child who devised the concept. “Doesn’t have to be complicated.”

And it isn’t complicated. If you haven’t seen the first Night at the Museum, the tablet brings all the exhibits in the museum to life, and the night guard has to keep it all under control.

Ben Stiller plays Larry Daily, the night guard in question. I have always found Stiller to be more irritable than any other adjective that could describe affection, but the masses seem to like him. And here he his, in the sequel facing off against Egyptian Pharoah Kah Mun Rah (Hank Azaria), Ivan the Terrible (Christopher Guest), Napoleon and Young Al Capone. (Point of inanity that has carried from the first film: how do these figures know anything about themselves? They are merely plastic replicas that have been brought to life. How does a brought-to-life model of an Egyptian pharaoh know anything about himself, or everybody else in the museum? Sorry… moving on now).

Larry has to stop Kah Mun Rah from bringing forth his army from a magic portal that is related to the magic tablet… why am I even explaining this. All you need to know is the aforementioned infamous archetypal villains of world history are fighting against the night guard, who has on his side Jedediah Smith (Owen Wilson), Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) and Octavius (Steve Coogan) from the first film, with the addition of General Custer (Bill Hader), Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) and a dozen bobble-head Albert Einsteins (Eugene Levy). Many of the actors in Battle of the Smithsonian have had moments of sheer brilliance in movie history, and the audience will recognize many of them and instantly like them because of their familiarity.

Now, I know this has been a bit of a angry rant, but I would like to refer to paragraph two, where I mentioned that I liked the movie. I enjoyed Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. It’s a stupid movie that I had more than a little fun watching. Yeah, I know it’s tailor-made to rip my money from my wallet, but sometimes a movie just rubs you the right way, even when you know it’s wrong.

Star Rating: 3 stars