Synopsis:
Security guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) infiltrates the
Smithsonian Institute in order to rescue his
museum friends, who have been shipped to the
museum by mistake.
The Freak's
Rating: C+ : Family films may be one of
the most difficult genres to carry out nicely.
Acting, directing and reality can't be the
strong suits of a family film or any child with
ADHD (and doesn't every one of them claim to
have it?) will lose interest in seconds.
Try to make it a comedic family film and you're
virtually painting yourself into a corner.
Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian
tries to pickup where the first left off and
somehow make us pull for a night watchmen once
more.
With
bad writing a definitive fact for this type of
film, there is truly only one way to pull it off
with any shred of success...casting. With
Stiller at the helm, there is a virtual who's
who of comedic actors all doing their best to
have a strong enough comic delivery that we'll
forgive the ignorance of their lines.
Jonah Hill (Superbad),
Amy Adams (Enchanted),
Owen Wilson, Hank Azaria, Robin Williams,
Christopher Guest, Steve Coogan, Bill Hader and
the always amazing Ricky Gervais were cast and
all do a wonderful job. The casting
director even tosses in music sensation, the
Jonas Brothers, as musical cherubs! Adams'
experience with Enchanted eases her into the
role of Amelia Earheart and she plays it
perfectly. Hank Azaria is flat out
wonderful as Kahmunrah (also voices The Thinker
and Abe Lincoln). The remainder of the
cast are strong in their supporting roles,
though at times (notably the Jonah Hill and
Azaria scenes) they are a tad overproduced and
lose a bit of their lustre.
Now,
onto the MAJOR aforementioned downfall of the
film...the script. The quick-witted Larry
(Stiller) has moments where his dialogue seems
extremely contrived and offputting. Who in
the world is this sarcastic among great
dictators and evil rulers from time's past?
Could you honestly look Al Capone in the face
and insult him? I'm an enormous fan of
sarcasm, but his seems artificial at times.
Realism is also chucked out the window as
Larry's son in shown gaining easy access to "top
secret" Smithsonian blueprints, urgency is
discarded in the final act of the film even as
one character is dying and Stiller is shown to
be a badass in fighting sequences that are
ridiculously choreographed. Another
glaring oversight is the magical tablet's range
to bring everything to life. In the first
film of the franchise it was shown to only work
within the museum, yet in the sequel it
apparently works all night long and clear across
the Washington DC monument's national mall.
Slams against Darth Vader as a "weak" bad guy
are unforgivable on a personal level along with
a faulty definition of a flapjack as a "biscuit
or scone". This definition is given by a
cowboy, one who should definitely know a
flapjack is a pancake. Do your research
writers! That is a simple Google search
result. There are many other issues, but I
won't take this entire review to slam them.
Ben
Stiller's first foray as night watchmen in the
original Night At The Museum was dreadful.
Somehow he reinvigorates the franchise (along
with a LOAD of heavy hitter actors) as mediocre
here. Though I can't imagine watching the
film again, I would recommend it to those who
liked the first one as I do see it as an
improvement. The writing is dreadful, but
the cast turns a dreadful script into a barely
tolerable one.
click here to review
it yourself!
