Posted: 12/23/2006

Night at the Museum

(2006)

by Hank Yuloff

We have all imagined it. When walking through a mannequin-filled department store or maybe a museum of natural history. “I wonder if these things could come alive when no one is around.” In 1987, the second of these possibilities was investigated in Mannequin. This holiday season, it is the museum.

Ben Stiller stars as Larry Daley, a mid-40s guy who has big ideas but has not been able to focus enough to make them come to fruition. So while he waits for his lucky break, he bounces from job to job. This causes his ex-wife to want to temporarily restrict his custody of his 10-year-old son. The job he finds is night watchman at the New York Natural History Museum.

If you have seen the trailers for this film, you know that at night, everything comes to life, including the skeleton of a T-Rex, a pride of lions, and all the wax representations of humans from our history on this planet. The secret to their nightly transformation and the plot to steal it, is the story around which the film revolves.

The job has opened because of cutbacks. The museum is decreasing from three retirement-aged night watchmen to one middle-aged watchman. As the older watchmen, played by Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs (The Derby Stallion, Sent), walk out the door, they hand Larry the keys and a rather lengthy instruction manual that he promptly ignores.

For those of you bringing kids, they will be entertained while you probably wonder why they are laughing so much. There are a few actors who seem to be doing the same character over and over: Will Ferrell, Martin Lawrence and Owen Wilson (who appears uncredited in this film) are three that immediately come to mind. Another is Stiller. In Meet the Parents, Duplex, Envy and many of his other movies, the “Ben Stiller character” of the loveable-loser-with-the-heart-of-gold-who-in-the-end-finds-redemption has been overdone and I am frankly bored with it.

There are some good performances. Robin Williams, appearing as Teddy Roosevelt, and Carla Gugino (Chicago Hope, Karen Sisco, Threshold) as Larry’s love interest were both wonderful.

Night at the Museum is a moderately passable comedy with enough effects to make it interesting, but the overall ability to hold the attention of anyone who is not a teenage boy is marginal.

Hank Yuloff is a film critic living in Los Angeles.

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