Night at the Museum
Chaos reigns at the natural history museum when night watchman Larry Daley accidentally stirs up an ancient curse, awakening Attila the Hun, an army of gladiators, a Tyrannosaurus rex and other exhibits.
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- Cast:
- Ben Stiller , Carla Gugino , Dick Van Dyke , Mickey Rooney , Bill Cobbs , Jake Cherry , Ricky Gervais
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Reviews
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
How can you make a fantasy comedy and not nail even one joke?I honestly don't understand how you can consider this movie good.
Night watchman Ben Stiller takes slapstick abuse from an entourage of famous figures in New York's museum of natural history. There's a superficial subplot about an ancient tablet, responsible for the wax statues and figurines coming to life every night, but the film isn't all that concerned with making sense of it and neither am I. So we're basically left with a hundred minutes of easy sight gags, base caricatures and flashy effects, mixed with overplayed reaction shots and hand-rubbing evil villains. Oh, and there's an empty dash of sappy divorced father / distanced son bonding mush. I get it, this is a broad family comedy and I can't expect much. My six-year-old boys enjoyed it, and have requested it again since, so it hits the target audience. Plus it merits points for making a trip to the museum and a bit of archival fact-finding seem like less of a chore to younger viewers, so, yay education. Robin Williams is enjoyable as a self-conscious Teddy Roosevelt statue, and Mickey Rooney is hilarious in a set of fiery, brief guest spots, but that's about all that merits remembering. I'm in no hurry to sit through it again.
Night at the Museum (2006): Dir: Shawn Levy / Cast: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Carla Gugino, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan: Embarrassing mess that plays like a chemistry experiment gone wrong. It regards facing fears as if viewing the film wasn't a big enough task. Ben Stiller is newly employed at a museum of natural history where everything miraculously comes to life. The special effects are about as fetching as guessing what food someone upchucks when sick. Setup is rushed into a routine structure consisting of Stiller dealing with mishaps. Director Shawn Levy can do better as he did with Just Married. He also directed Cheaper by the Dozen and The Pink Panther. Stiller is basically a subject for target practice as he struggles to maintain order. Robin Williams plays 26th President Teddy Roosevelt whom comes to life to give Stiller words of wisdom, none involving torching this film unfortunately. Carla Gugino is wasted as a museum historian who is basically seen as a potential romantic prop. She is also the museum tour guide who wasn't lucky enough to give these people a tour of a better film set. Owen Wilson plays a miniature cowboy in a miniature role. Similar to Jumanji only much worse. The norm is the special effects, which is hardly a complimentary element in the film. Despite the imagination, this film is about as boring as History class. Score: 2 / 10
"Night at the Museum" is an American 105-minute film from 10 years ago. It was directed by Shawn Levy and written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon based on Milan Trenc's children's book. The premise is simple. A night watchman discovers that the exhibits at a museum come to life at night. This is actually enough to construct a convincing and entertaining film around, but they failed to do so for the most part. Instead, this film got lost quickly in unrealistic and pretentious relationship drama (especially father-son) and spectacular (yet empty) special effects. The cast includes a couple actors I like (Stiller, Williams, Coogan, Gervais, the old guys and rising star Rami Malek is in here too very early in his career), but it proves once again that it is always all about the script. The way they were written they did not manage to stay interesting for a couple scenes regardless of their comedic talent and/or range.In terms of commercial success, this film was a huge hit ending as number 2 of 2006 behind the newest "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. This is certainly also the reason why 2 more "Night at the Museum" films followed, one very recently. Looking at the quality of this original movie, no sequel was justified and I can only shake my head at the awards attention this film received. The only thing I kinda liked about it were the historic references, the fact that it takes a while to figure out the main antagonists and very rarely the humor. But both these aspects were overshadowed by the cringeworthy attempts of the makers to make this film a lot funnier than it actually turned out in the end. I have not read Trenc's base material, but there's no way he can be happy with how this turned out.All in all, even as a Ben Stiller fan, I cannot recommend the watch here. Very bad in terms of the dramatic scenes and moral impact the film is trying to make and weak in terms of the comedy. Yet, it would have been better if this would have been a 100% comedy movie, with another writer however please. I really hope the sequels are better if I watch them at some point, but I do not have a lot of hope. "Night at the Museum" is only a film for people who are easily impressed by intriguing special effects and do not need much of a story or intelligent humor. Looking at the audience numbers, this is probably more than it should be really. However, I personally urge you to stay away from this weak film we have here. Thumbs down. This could have been so so much more.