Review of Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014) by Kyle L — 09 Jan 2015

Featuring a magical storyline, filled with dazzling special effects which gives the movie a magical feel and combined with amazing and memorable performances from the great Robin Williams and Mickey Rooney (who both died before this film's release) Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb is a fitting and satisfying conclusion to a once in a lifetime family friendly movie and it is the best out of the three films since the original Night At The Museum.

This movie takes place after Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian where Larry Daley is living a new life and his son is all grown up now and he spends a lot of time with his long time exhibit friends.

But soon the exhibits start to behave strangely and Larry soon learns that the Tablet is about to corrode which he soon learns that the exhibits will no longer come back to life and as the clock ticks Larry and his friends are in a race of time to find a way to save his friends before the magic disappears.

I just finished watching this film with my mother and I have to say I love this movie and I've watched all three Night At The Museum films and out of the three films this is the best in the series with the original being second best and its also great enough to see Mickey Rooney and Robin Williams on their final moments before they both died in the same year.

What makes Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb an amazing movie is that the film seriously managed to have a lot of major improvements over the previous films (better pacing, more adventure, more character development and funnier jokes) and this is an example of a sequel that can be considered as the best film in a once in a lifetime trilogy and it has more humor and justice over the previous films.

If the first one was just an introduction to the characters, part 2 is flawed but more of an expansion to the first film instead of a sequel then part 3 expands the mythology of the magic behind the exhibits coming to life and a closing chapter to the lovable and memorable franchise we've ever seen in the cinema.

One of the other good things about this film is that the movie has loads of special effects that are stunning and dazzling at the same time, all of the CGI gives the film a magical feel that is similar to The Pagemaster but better than The Pagemaster.

The other good things about this film is that the movie has more humor and jokes that are even funnier than the second film and there are so many scenes that I seriously laughed throughout the movie (The hilarious opening scene, Scenes with Rebel Wilson, the hilarious sequence where Dexter urinates on Jedediah and Octavius, Hugh Jackman's memorable and hilarious cameo and the hilarious ending with Rebel Wilson's character and Ben Stiller's second character with Bill Medley's The Time Of My Life playing in the background) plus I love the return of Guillermo Navarro's (Pacific Rim, Pan's Labyrinth) cinematography which gives the film a magical feel and I love his work on this movie and there are loads of tight camera angles and every frame has a superb quality better than John Schwartzman's camera work for the second film and the soundtrack by Alan Silvestri is fun and full of magic at the same time.

But the true main highlight of this movie are the performances of the casts. All of the actors deliver fun and memorable performances that we will never forget. Ben Stiller delivers the best performance in his entire career and he was so funny when he plays the caveman more than Larry Daley and I love that in this film he and Robin Williams get to play two characters instead of one, Robin Williams did also a very good job with his performance in this film as Theodore Roosevelt and the voice of the little Garuda in the British Museum and this is his best performance since One Hour Photo.

The Same can be said to the regular casts like Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan and Ricky Gervais. While the new casts did a very good job with their performances in this film like Rebel Wilson as the hilarious British Museum guard, Ben Kingsley as Ahkmenrah's father and Skyler Gisondo as a teenage version of Nick Daley (who was previously portrayed by Jake Cherry in the first two) and its also nice to see the performances of Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs as the former antagonists in the first Night At The Museum and its nice enough we get to see them in this film before Mickey Rooney died along with Robin Williams oh and Hugh Jackman's cameo is funny and hilarious.

Director Shawn Levy did an amazing job with his work on this film and in my opinion the Night At The Museum films are one of the best films he made since Real Steel and its better than his other comedy films (Cheaper by the Dozen, The Pink Panther etc.

..) and I'm hoping he should make more good Family friendly films in the future. Overall Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb is a satisfying closing chapter in a once in a lifetime Magical and hilarious franchise.

This movie gets a 10/10.