I've said it before and I'll say it again (mainly because it's true and likely always will be), movie studios and filmmakers often get into the bigger is better mentality when it comes to sequels. After all, since the basic premise is usually already established in round one and the mindset is that viewers want something above and beyond what they've previously experienced, the easiest (but usually not cheapest) way to go is to take things up a notch or two.
With that in mind, the sequel to "Night at the Museum" only had one such destination. After all, New York City's Museum of Natural History is a pretty big place, so the logical next locale would be the mother of all such institutions -- the "nation's attic." The result -- that brings back most of the human and magically brought to life museum attractions and mixes them with a brand new set -- is "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian."
While it suffers from and even magnifies some of the same problems that bedeviled its predecessor, I found this offering slightly more entertaining than the original. The target audience of younger kids won't care about any such criticism, however, as they'll likely eat up this combo of action-adventure and museum-based history to figures equaling or exceeding the first pic's nearly $575 million worldwide box office take.
With the setup now out of the way -- that explains how the museum figures and attractions come to life thanks to an ancient and magical Egyptian tablet -- the premise here is quite simple. The original museum is shut down for more technologically advanced renovations and thus most of the figures are being sent off to the "Federal Archives," a massive complex beneath the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Learning the tablet isn't going with them, but later receiving something of a distress call stating it did which has resulted in new trouble, former night guard turned product gimmick entrepreneur Larry Daley (Ben Stiller in usual "comically bad things happen to me" mode) realizes he must do something to save his friends who only come to life at night.
Once there, he discovers a power-hungry, 3000-year-old Egyptian pharaoh (the brother of the one from the first film) and, with the help of friends old and new (the latter including Amelia Earhart, General Custer and others) must prevent the pharaoh and his new minions -- Al Capone, Napoleon and Ivan the Terrible -- from taking over the museum complex and perhaps the world.
While Stiller again gets the lion's share of screen time running to and fro, and Amy Adams makes for a cute it not exactly historically accurate transatlantic fly girl, the film's modest pleasures come from the smaller elements and moments. Some of that stems from various characterizations, such as those offered by small to extended cameos by Jonah Hill and Bill Hader. Hank Azaria is somewhat fun as the pharaoh, even if the slightly effeminate and half-serious, half-goofy villain character has been done to death, and despite the actor doing a weird accent that's supposed to be Boris Karloff but sounded more to me like an odd Jeremy Irons impersonation.
All of that said, and as was the case the first time around but multiplied here, there are simply too many characters in play, meaning most of the original ones (including Robin Williams) and many of the newer ones end up shortchanged. The same holds true for the creative plot elements.
While scribes Robert Ben Garant & Thomas Lennon occasionally have some fun with the built-in potential -- characters interacting with historical paintings and even entering the world inside of a famous photo -- the filmmakers, including returning director Shawn Levy, don't utilize enough of that or take it as far as they could and obviously should have (a problem I also had with the first flick).
The same holds true for characters interacting with famous inanimate objects found in the Smithsonian's various museums (and don't get me started on the creative license of the assembly of such items -- some of which aren't in any of the museums -- into one locale). What's there is amusing (think of stuff ranging from "The Wizard of Oz" to "All in the Family"), but I wanted more, which exemplifies the overall offering (and the Smithsonian -- that allowed this to be the first picture filmed inside part of it, mostly because officials saw the attendance uptick in New York after the first film -- probably share the same sentiment of "bring out the goods").
Notwithstanding all of that, younger kids will likely love it, and many adults probably won't mind sitting through it. Yet, had as much creativity gone into maximizing the story potential to equal all of the running around, goofy jokes and PG-related action, this could have been so much better. Even so, "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" is entertaining enough to come in a notch above its predecessor, and thus rate as a 4. 5 out of 10.
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