Film Review: Night At The Museum 2

by Damon Smith

Ben Stiller in the film, Night At The Museum 2 _460

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 2 (Cert. PG, 104 mins)
Stars: Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Hank Azaria, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Robin Williams, Christopher Guest, John Benthal, Alain Chabat
Directed by Shawn Levy

HISTORY is brought vividly to life with a dazzling array of computer-generated effects in Night At The Museum 2, a soulless exercise in digital might over emotional substance and subtlety.

Directed once again by Shawn Levy, who is aided and abetted by the cast of the 2006 family-oriented blockbuster, the sequel continues the misadventures of the living exhibits from New York City’s famed Museum of Natural History.

Screenwriters Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon allow the visual effects team to run riot by relocating the storyline to the largest museum complex in the world: the hallowed halls of the Smithsonian Institute, in Washington DC.

Thus, in a chase around one gargantuan, subterranean vault, Ben Stiller’s beleaguered night guard dodges the tentacles of a giant squid as a pterosaur swoops overhead and General Custer (Bill Hader) screeches into battle on his trusty motorcycle.

"What’s the plan here?" Larry Daley (Stiller) wonders aloud.

"We’re Americans. We don’t plan, we do," grins Custer.

Children will giggle at the bobble- head Albert Einsteins and one of Pop artist Jeff Koons’s shiny balloon dogs, which bounds excitedly around the museum halls.

Predominantly, however, humour skews towards teenage and adult audiences, poking fun at historical figures such as Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln, whose memorial on the National Mall enjoys a night- time stroll.

Security guard Larry has left behind his old job at the museum to front Daley Devices infomercial products, which has just launched the glow-in-the-dark torch.

Returning to his old haunt, Larry is distraught to learn from Dr McPhee (Ricky Gervais) that many of the old exhibits are being replaced by state-of-the-art holographic technology, condemning cowboy Jed (Wilson), mighty Roman emperor Octavius (Coogan) and Native American tracker Sacajawea (Mizuo Peck) to storage in Washington.