Director: Shawn Levy
Starring: Ben Stiller, Amy Adams & Owen Wilson
Occasionally entertaining and featuring a charming performance from Amy Adams, Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian is a fairly bland comedy.
Night at the Museum, featuring a few entertaining cameos from well known comedic actors but also a pretty average straight performance from Ben Stiller and a plot that never really came to life like the exhibits in its premise, the film was still successful enough at the Box Office, and with children, to warrant a sequel. Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian comes to the big screen and sees fit not to change the formula established by the first film.
After the events of Night at the Museum, former night guard Larry Daley (Stiller) has gone on to become a success at inventing and selling small scale inventions such as the ‘glow in the dark torch.’ Having neglected the living exhibits at his former job, the New York Museum, Larry pays a visit to find that the exhibits are being retired and put into storage below the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC where they may never come to life again. When Dexter the monkey steals the Egyptian tablet that gives the exhibits life and takes it to the Smithsonian, Larry must re-evaluate his new life and go to Washington to save his former friends who are prisoner of Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria), an Egyptian Pharaoh kept at the Smithsonian now also brought to life by the tablet. With the aid of new living exhibits such as General Custer (Bill Hader) and Amelia Earhart (Adams), Larry must save his friends, stop Kahmunrah from using the tablet to raise an army and prevent his friends from being returned to storage in a lifeless state afterwards.
Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian is fairly safe, straight forward film, much like its predecessor. While mainly pushing the importance of learning history and the importance of museums in teaching history, particularly to children, the film rarely challenges its audience. Content to briefly skim over the historical relevance of some of its characters (explaining that Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly over the Atlantic but avoiding addressing the circumstances surrounding her disappearance or death to either the character or to the audience) and portraying its villainous characters in too comedic a fashion which somewhat undermines the believability as a threat to Larry and his allies within the film in addition to their status as villains in history (Al Capone merely fulfils a gangster stereotype here). There is often the feeling that the filmmakers are throwing too many characters and too much history into the film’s runtime that it barely has time to do justice to much of it. While there are some truly enjoyable moments thanks to some entertaining cameos such as Bill Hader as the gung-ho General Custer, Jonah Hill as a Smithsonian security guard and especially with Amy Adams who is charming and energetic as Amelia Earhart, there are also just as many cameos or characters that fail to entertain or see worthwhile use such as CGI-rendered bobble heads of Albert Einstein or an underused Owen Wilson reprising his role as Jebediah Smith but left mainly to sit around as Kahmunrah’s prisoner.
Performances throughout the film are a mixed affair. Ben Stiller is likeable as Larry but his role as the straight man makes his character and performance less interesting or memorable when held up against the performances of some of co-stars. Amy Adams however is a true highlight. Bubbling with energy and positivity, her Amelia Earhart, portrayed as a woman who refuses to miss out on adventure is always entertaining. Hank Azaria is satisfactory as the villainous Pharaoh Kahmunrah who, despite offering too much comic relief to be a believable threat, gets some entertaining lines when his character is not around to merely drive the plot forward. Owen Wilson is likeable but underused as Jebediah while Steve Coogan gets better moments Octavious, Bill Hader is entertaining as General Custer and Robin Williams is likeable in his return to the role of Theodore Roosevelt.
Overall, despite some entertaining cameos and a very enjoyable performance from Amy Adams, Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian fails to entertain as much with its story and rarely rests long enough for audiences to truly engage with its characters’ histories or relevance.
Rating: 2/5
