Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Film review

Keep in mind, it's a kid movie

The T. Rex in the commercials? That's the best part about Night at the Museum.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published December 21, 2006

Milan Trenc's children's book The Night at the Museum was 32 pages long, written and illustrated for ages 4 to 8. Of course, Hollywood took that and blew it out of proportion.

Director Shawn Levy's movie version gets the demographic right. Children won't mind bad writing and big stars upstaged by has-beens as long as the T. Rex skeleton comes alive as it does in the TV ads.

Bless their little indiscriminate hearts. The rest of us will watch Night at the Museum and wonder why we bothered.

Trenc told a simple story about a night watchman searching for dinosaur bones that mysteriously disappear. Levy and two screenwriters make him into Ben Stiller with all the artificial humility and forced humor he brings.

Stiller plays Larry Daley, divorced and unemployed after an invention failed. He devised the Snapper to switch on lights. Yes, there is already a Clapper. That's the cleverest writing the overlong setup offers.

Larry's desperation to impress his son, Nick Jake Cherry, takes him to the Museum of Natural History where a security job is available.

That's where the dinosaurs arrive. Not the T. Rex, but octogenarians Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney, plus Bill Cobbs, 71, as security guards getting too old to deal with what happens at the museum at night. They're happy to be in a movie, or anywhere, and that adds a nice spark.

After dark, all the exhibits become either computer-animated (the T. Rex, a woolly mammoth and an Easter Island idol) or actor-limited (Robin Williams going through the scattershot motions as Teddy Roosevelt). Owen Wilson declined a credit listing for his yahoo turn as a diorama cowboy, but we'd recognize that nose anywhere. Steve Coogan makes the most of a (literally) small role as a Roman general in a territory war with the diorama next door.

Wee folks get the best jokes in Night at the Museum, as Larry's intrusion in their miniworlds become silly Lilliputian adventures. Larry's to-do list when the magic begins inspires a brisk sequence of pre-emptive strikes, and a mischievous monkey is a solid scampering joke. Night at the Museum pads its running time with Larry's paternal bonding, Williams' riffing and a curiously limited number of roaming exhibits for such a big place.

Mostly, there's the distasteful notion of juicing a sweet children's book into blockbuster pulp. The folks behind Night at the Museum would have turned Curious George into the 1976 version of King Kong.

Night at the Museum

Grade: C

Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs, Jake Cherry, Ricky Gervais

Screenplay: Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon, based on the book by Milan Trenc

Rating: PG; mild peril, brief crude humor

Running time: 109 min.

[Last modified December 20, 2006, 10:36:15]