Movie Review - “A Night At The Museum”
** STARS
This movie was a bit of a let down, but really what was I expecting? I watched this movie Christmas weekend and was hoping to get some good laughs and holiday cheer. Instead I watched a boring, silly little mess that reaffirmed my dislike for Owen Wilson and most of Ben Stiller’s comedies. Every funny scene in the movie has been given away in the movie trailers and commercials.
The premise is pretty big, but the pay off is small. If I was 10 years old this movie would have been my favorite of the year. If you want to find a family film with some good special effects than I guess this is the movie for you. Right away we get the same old bland plot. Ben Stiller plays a divorced Dad with a bad habit of losing his job. His son is depicted as a career counselor constantly expressing his disappointment in his dads inability to keep a good high paying job. This part annoyed me, what kid cares what type of job his dad has, as long as he is getting the support he needs, who cares?
At his new job at the Museum of Natural History he finds out right away things are not as they seem. All of the exhibits come to life thanks to an Egyptian tablet that is on display in the museum. These things are silly and don’t really help the reasoning of the movie very much, but it gives you an idea of how far fetched this movie is.
Throughout the movie we watch Ben Stiller stumble through the museum keeping the artifacts in line and making sure none of them escapes by daylight or else the exhibits themselves will turn into dust. There are a couple other sub-plots concerning the previous night guards played by Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney, but all in all this movie was just all over the place. It mildly amused me at parts, but in the end I really did not care for the zany set up and over the top acting.
This movie is a huge hit at the moment but who really needs to go see this piece of fluff when there are other fabulous movies worth the label “eye candy” out there for you to watch. “Happy Feet” is a much better family film with spectacular visuals. Eventually this movie will fade out into the landscape of over sized, loud big budget family holiday films.
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