Review of Night at the Museum (2006) by Markb. — 08 Feb 2007

And a long, slow, boring and seemingly endless night it is, too...in short, everything that the Museum of Natural History absolutely is NOT. The partial premise, that this museum is losing money and needs to lay off employees, is flimsier than the footbridge in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but it's only the beginning of the film's problems: they're compounded by an annoyingly witless, unimaginative script that assumes that merely assembling a cast consisting of Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney will automatically grow the laughs and energy that it failed to provide in and of itself.

Well, in Aerosmith's immortal words, dream on. Stiller's ineffectual, bumbling schlemiel schtick, which was actually funny once upon a time when he premiered it in There's Something About Mary and followed it up with Meet the Parents, got irreversibly old and tiresome around the time of Along Came Polly roughly 94 movies ago.

(An early scene that Stiller shares here with his real-life mom, the legendary comedienne Anne Meara, fails to generate any comic sparks whatsoever because the punchline deals with an invention whose mere mention in a joke renders said joke only slightly less outdated than jokes about streaking or pet rocks.

And speaking of lame material, didn't Brokeback Mountain gags die out the week after last year's Oscars...and even if not, what's one doing in what's supposed to be a family film?) Stiller plays a divorced, unemployed father attempting to regain his little boy's respect by taking a night watchman's position at the museum.

..but he gets more than he expected or prepared for when dinosaurs, cowboys, gladiators and Teddy Roosevelt routinely come to life after the lights go out. The inevitable special effects jamboree that ensues IS genuinely impressive and extremely well done, but since it's in the service of such lackluster material, the result is comparable to Halston or Oscar de la Renta costuming a corpse.

And Shawn Levy's traffic-cop direction is forcing me to re-evaluate my long-held ranking of Michael Bay as the biggest hack currently working in Hollywood. Bay may be offensive and obnoxious, but at least he's got a distinctive style.

Levy, on the other hand, has specialized almost exclusively in cannibalizing the past: he turned the fine old 1950 Clifton Webb-Myrna Loy period piece Cheaper by the Dozen into just another forgettable slapstick family sitcom that did nothing for Steve Martin except stuff his bank account, and earlier in 2006 he and Martin destroyed Inspector Clouseau for an entire generation.

With Night at the Museum, Levy apparently endeavors to do the same for Jurassic Park, The Indian in the Cupboard, Ghostbusters and much, much more, so I guess the man is more ambitious than I initially thought.

The real mystery is why America so enthusiastically embraced this thing, making it the Number One box office draw of the Christmas season (outperforming such infinitely superior family fare as Charlotte's Web and even Happy Feet).

In contrast, the biggest moneymaker of the previous holiday season was the superb, truly magical fantasy-adventure drama The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; while that was a real diamond, Night at the Museum is a lump of.

..well, no, I can't say coal because coal at least has the POTENTIAL to eventually become a diamond. Decorum prevents me from going into too much further detail in describing just what it is that most of Night at the Museum constitutes a lump of, except to say that finding it in your Christmas stocking is especially unfortunate because in most parts of the country it's far too cold to open the door and air out the house.