Larry (Ben Stiller) is a loser dad who is told he needs to get a regular steady job so he can continue seeing his 10 year old son Nick (Jake Cherry). After all, his invention of the snapper which works like a light clapper but is harder to pull off wasn't going anywhere. He accepts the first job he can find, to work as a security guard at the historic museum replacing three old timers (Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs) but there's one thing they never told him during the job interview.... the musuem comes to life at night! It's a shame that Night at the Museum was made by hack director Shawn Levy (the guy who brought us Cheaper by the Dozen, The Pink Panther), because this is truly one of the better family entertainment concepts that has fallen into the laps of Hollywood in quite some time. Too good even for writers Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon who must have saw the chance to make millions when they stumbled across Milan Trenc's 1993 picture book about a night watchmen at the museum of Natural History in New York. Like the kid's book, this film should have been lots of fun. A few laughs during the festive season which would proclaim the good clean moral message that "studying the past, leaves us well equipped for the future", which cleverly with Larry positioned as a loser dad, also works for him to look at his past mistakes to help guide his new future. Good moral message and the perfect chance to make history fun for children. HOW DID THEY MESS THIS UP? Instead Night at the Museum is way too forced with little redeeming or interesting qualities and with a ridiculous low brow humour which hardly made me laugh at all. Bad sign for a comedy. Small turns from Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan delivered the cheapest laughs possible prostituting themselves for a quick and easy paycheck. Ricky Gervais isyet again an annoying and pompus boss who's acting bores me now. Robin Williams was probably the only actor to come out of this mess with any respect but was unfortunately let down by an underwritten character with a stupid narrative arc. This film could have been so much better. Imagine if all these wonderful creatures and historic wax statues came to life slowly and gradually, giving us the chance to question whether there were actually supernatural occurences in this musuem or not. Instead they blow the load after 30 minutes. You can feel the film run out of steam and completely lose the plot as they only ever had a concept... and no idea how to execute it. No matter how good the concept, if you don't know what to do with it your screwed. The writers decide to add on an extra "villain" plot to flesh out the third act which just seemed like a last minute panic decision from the screenwriters. The film soon begins to show unforgivable plot holes (how come nobody has noticed these characters come to life in over 50 years, don't they have security camera's at the Museum?) and the writers were obviously bored during the scriptwriting stages as they always take the easy (and dumb) way out of any complex situation they place their characters in. One night at the musuem, soon becomes two, three then four with each night being even less interesting than the previous. This film should have been set over the course of one night with a much tighter and slower paced movie which could have at least tried to have a couple of "smarter" jokes instead of going for cheap laughs and a sickly sentimental message.
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rating: 2
Night at the Museum has a great concept but ultimately lacks the talent or convictions to execute it properly. The movie is enjoyable for 20 mintues, but goes flat really quickly, with a script that seems to have been churned out by a "scriptwriting 101" manual.