Night at the Museum

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

Huns attack, Civil War soldiers square off, a menagerie of wild animals are unleashed and a T-Rex is on the loose in Night at the Museum, a film bound to become the family entertainment choice of the holiday season. With state-of-the-art visual effects, a well-cast Ben Stiller and a whole bunch of terrific comedians in support—everyone from Robin Williams as a nicely restrained Teddy Roosevelt, Owen Wilson, and Ricky Gervais to golden oldies like Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney (who has been in movies for so many decades he belongs in a museum himself)—it is really a history lesson disguised as a comedy. Set in New York's American Museum of Natural History, Stiller is a down-on-his-luck, newly hired night guard who discovers that the minute the doors close for the day, the wax statues come to life. Once he figures out their game plan, he goes into action trying to outsmart this United Nations of dead stuff. From King Tut to the Mayans to the Wild Wild West, every period of man and animalkind is represented in an insanely clever melding of the ages. Don't say it too loud but this thing is actually, uh pardon the expression, educational. Kids will love it in spite of that drawback, and anyone whose head reaches even slightly above the seat is gonna have fun as well. Sure the plot is nonsense, but for a film with a summer movie mentality being released in the dead of winter, who could ask for much more? It's a blockbuster. Deal with it.