Susan Granger’s review of “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” (20th Century Fox)
They’re b-a-a-a-ck. Ben Stiller as Larry Daley, the former security guard at New York’s Museum of Natural History hasn’t found happiness with his new entrepreneurial success, so his diorama friends – Robin Williams, as Teddy Roosevelt, along with Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan, as the miniature cowboy and Roman centurion – are happy to see him again.
But much to their chagrin, these exhibits and more are being shipped off to the Federal Archives into the vast underground storage area beneath the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. as the Museum modernizes its facilities. Determined to get his buddies back and save the magical Egyptian tablet that brings them to life, Daley darts frantically around the world’s largest museum complex, including the Air & Space Museum, with more than 136 million items in its eclectic collections.
With all those artifacts to choose among, it’s bizarre that the repeat writing team of Robert Ben Grant and Thomas Lennon and returning director Shawn Levy toss in Rodin’s “The Thinker” from the Musee Rodin in Paris, along with Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” and Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks,” both on display at the Art Institute in Chicago. Indeed, Archie Bunker’s chair, Muhammad Ali’s boxing robe and Dorothy’s ruby slippers are at the National Museum of American History, not the Smithsonian. But that’s factual quibbling. The pointless, implausible silliness and tedious slapstick cheek-slapping are far more egregious, despite a truncated imaginary excursion into Alfred Eisenstaedt’s classic W.W. II photo of V-J Day in Times Square.
Villains include lisping Pharoah Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria), Napoleon (Alain Chabat), Ivan the Terrible (Christopher Guest), and Al Capone (Jon Bernthal), while Daley’s new allies are aviatrix Amelia Earhart (sensationally spunky Amy Adams), the Tuskegee Airmen and the huge marble statue of Abraham Lincoln (voiced by Hank Azaria) on the Mall, plus bobble-headed Albert Einstein (voiced by Eugene Levy).
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” is a fitful, flighty 4, a frenetic diversion that’s destined for a popular niche on the dvd shelf.
