CINEMA: Night at the Museum 2

The saying goes “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, which is why this sequel of the hugely successful NATM 1 is more of the same with a few new characters thrown in for good measure.

Ben Stiller resumes his role as museum nightwatchman Larry, although he has now left to set up his own business. However, on a trip back to the museum to play with the dinosaur and chat with Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) he discovers all his favourite exhibits are being shipped out to be stored in the basement of the Smithsonian in Washington. Larry knows he can’t forsake his old buddies including Attila The Hun (Patrick Gallagher), General Custer (Bill Hader) and miniature cowboy Jed (Owen Wilson), Roman Octavius (Steve Coogan), or that infuriating monkey and so travels to Washington to find them. However, the Smithsonian is huge and spread across a number of different venues so while on the quest to find his mates he bumps into Egyptian ruler Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria), Napoleon (Alain Chabat) and Ivan The Terrible (Christopher Guest) and eventually has to enlist the help of Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) to foil their evil plans for world domination.

This is one of those movies where it is almost inevitable that setting the story will take an age as there is so much backplot to get through and so many characters to reintroduce, but director Shawn Levy then exacerbates the slow pace of the film by intercutting the (too few) action scenes with longueurs where nothing much of anything happens. These are mostly scenes dealing with the nascent romance between Larry and Amelia when all the audience really wants is to know how the familiar characters are faring.

Unfortunately, as they spend most of the movie stuck in a cargo container, when we do return to them there’s nothing much going on anyway. This is a great pity as there is so much imagination in this film (a wonderful scene with ‘wobble head’ miniature busts of Einstein is inspired, but is over almost before it begins) it could have been a great old-fashioned action romp with a host of famous historical figures and assorted fauna stampeding through the vast areas under the museum. Instead, by concentrating on the twee romance and neglecting the action it becomes a vapid ghost image of the original.

Dee Pilgrim