In Night At the Museum, Ben Stiller plays his usual role as a good-hearted schlemiel thrust into a humiliating situation that he ultimately emerges from with a small measure of heroic dignity. In this instance, his character, Larry Daley, is an out of work weekend Dad who is about to be evicted from his apartment once again and thus lose the last shred of admiration his ten year old son has for him. To keep both the apartment and the son's affections, he accepts a job as night watchman at a New York City Natural History Museum, where an Egyptian tablet has for some decades administered a powerful magic spell that causes history literally to "come alive."
Each evening, the museum's wax and bone denizens, human and animal alike, become animate, leave their various encasements and displays, wander the museum's corridors, and raise havoc with museum property, each other, and, of course, Larry. The human cast of characters prominently includes Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams), Sacajawea ( Mizuo Peck), Attila the Hun (Patrick Gallagher), a miniature cowboy (Owen Wilson), and an equally diminutive Octavius Caesar (Steve Coogan) while the animal crew is headed by a capuchin monkey, a tyrannosaurus skeleton, and a pride of lions. As we ultimately learn, Larry (Stiller) has been selected for the job because he seems like a perfect stooge/fall-guy for the nefarious plans of three outgoing night watchmen (Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs) he is ostensibly replacing. Night at the Museum is based on a clever farcical concept that - one might think - would serve as a perfect vehicle for Stiller's comic persona. Unfortunately, something damaging intervened in the concept's translation to an actual film, namely a screenplay that is short on laughs and long on predictability and sap.
Too many scenes in Night at the Museum fall humorlessly flat; for instance, Larry's confrontations with the museum's pompous but inarticulate curator. Others, like the Oprah style pop psychological healing of Attila the Hun's inner child, are almost embarrassingly bad. The scenes with diorama miniature cowboys (headed by Owen Wilson) and miniature Roman army (led by Steve Coogan's Octavius) are mildly amusing thanks to the efforts of the actors and neat special effects, but, again, suffer from an underwritten and unimaginative script. The scenes involving Sacajawea are completely pointless other than the riff on the pronunciation of the last syllables of her name (waya or weeya?) By the third repetition of the joke, it has been thoroughly emptied of the scant humor it contained on the first go round. And what can one say of Robin Williams' turn as Teddy Roosevelt other than that it made one fondly recall the much funnier Teddy that stole scenes in the classic Arsenic and Old Lace? Except for one brief scene where Williams is allowed to release his inventive comic genius into a parody of African "Click" language, he is kept completely in check (and thus wasted) exhorting the Stiller character to rise to the heroic occasion, repeating Shakespearean chestnuts about having "greatness" thrust upon one, and mooning after/stalking Sacajawea with unrequited love.
Yes, Night at the Museum does evoke a few chuckles - most examples of which were included in the film's ubiquitous trailers - but it contains surprisingly little physical humor and utterly lacks wit, unless one finds a scene between Stiller and the capuchin monkey concocted solely to justify the punch line "stop slapping the monkey" the height of cleverness. Most members of the audience I saw the film with didn't think so, or they were too young or too old to get the joke. Which raises another issue with the film - what was the intended age group of its principal audience? Codgers who might delight in the bit parts of Hollywood legends? Boppers who might identify with the museum docent who upon meeting Sacajawea, supposedly the subject of her 900 page doctoral dissertation, is reduced to pre-verbal ("you rock!') groupie talk. Kids needing a history lesson or amused by urine gags? No doubt the intent was "all of the above." Unfortunately, that aim - as with much of today's Hollywood fare - ends up reaching "none of the above" very satisfyingly.
Falling into the "Codgers" demographic myself, the chief pleasures of Night at the Museum for me were the brief opening scene played between Stiller and real-life mother, Anne Meara, and the amazingly energetic performances of octogenarian Dick Van Dyke and near nonagenarian Mickey Rooney, looking (and acting) better than he has in what? fifty years? I should also add some complimentary words for the film's visual delights, highlighted by some stunning displays of forced perspective as well as the imaginative animation of a puppyish tyrannosaurus skeleton that enjoys playing fetch with one of its own colossal bones. All in all, though, Night at the Museum was a major disappointment.
