When it came to 2006’s Night at the Museum, this reviewer found himself more in line with the popular opinion than with the critical majority.  I thought it was fun. It was the kind of movie people like me often refer to as a rollicking adventure.  New York City’s Museum of Natural History sure wasn’t complaining either as their visitation numbers spiked thanks to a renewed interest in their exhibits.  Three years later we get the inevitable sequel, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.  While I’m sure the Washington D.C. museum will receive a similar boost to the one in New York, unfortunately the sequel failed to win me over as its predecessor had.

The story picks up a few years later as Ben Stiller’s Larry Daley has moved on as the museum’s night guard and created his own company thanks to his invention of such products as the glow-in-the-dark flashlight.  When he returns one night to spend some time with his living-exhibit buddies at his old stomping grounds, he learns that they have all been boxed up and are being shipped off to the National Archives in Washington D.C. for storage while their museum receives a modern technology facelift.

Larry tries to stop the move, but there is nothing he can do.  The night after the move, however, he receives a distress call and races to D.C. to save his friends from the power-hungry Egyptian ruler Kahmunrah who is bent on—what else?—world domination.  From the depths of the archives buried beneath the Smithsonian, Kahmunrah manages to recruit some help in the form of Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon, and Al Capone, while turning away the likes of Darth Vader and Oscar the Grouch, who just aren’t fearsome enough for the lisping villain.

For his part, Larry is able to recruit, albeit unwillingly, the assistance of aviator Amelia Earhart, General Custer, and Honest Abe himself.  So begins the Battle of the Smithsonian.

Although the movie as a whole failed to win me over, I did enjoy the two main new characters.  Bill Hader brings some battle-cry comedic fire to his role as the gung-ho Custer and the always delightful Amy Adams chews up some scenery as the fast-talking, tomboyish Earhart.

My main issue with the film is that the comedy doesn’t really serve the story, and vice-versa.  It seems that whenever director Shawn Levy and his screenwriters want to tell a joke, they can’t figure out a way to blend it into the action.  The result is the equivalent of watching a movie at home and pausing every so often to flip over to a stand-up comedian for a joke, then returning to the movie.  This would still work if the jokes themselves were funny, but for the most part they fall completely flat.  This is exacerbated by the fact that Levy seems content to let his actors continue to riff rather than calling cut, causing these humorless interludes to drag.

Finally, although the movie is not intended to be anything more than a comic romp, I would have liked to actually learn a thing or two, as it is a movie that takes place in what I believe to be the largest museum in the world.  If nothing else, I would have liked to have learned what happened the next morning when tourists and museum employees arrived to discover the fallout of the previous night’s battle.  That could be the subject of another movie altogether.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is rated PG for “mild action and brief language.”  There’s really nothing for parents to fear here, unless their kids have a fear of live dinosaur skeletons. 

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.