PLOT: An Egyptian curse that works only at night brings alive all the stuffed animals and wax figures at New York's Museum of Natural History.
Take the kids and spend a Night At The Museum. You'll have some fantasy fun.
This one is a genuine surprise, because it initially looked like a throwaway Hollywood comedy, or a cheap spinoff of some of the ideas in Jumanji.
But, while the internal logic that leads to the fantasy here is a little messy, the whole wacky enterprise actually works. And works pretty well.
It opens in theatres today.
Set in New York but shot in Vancouver, Night At The Museum sets up Ben Stiller as a lovable loser, a divorcee who cannot find steady employment and looks pathetic in the eyes of his young son (Jake Cherry).
To appease his ex, he gets a job as night watchman at New York's famed Museum of Natural History. Three crusty and slightly crazy old-timers (Dick Van Dyke, Bill Cobbs and a creepy Mickey Rooney) initiate him in the job.
On his first night, things go insane. All the animals, from lions to dinosaurs, come alive. So do the wax figures, from a full-sized Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) to tiny figurines such as a Wild West cowboy (Owen Wilson) and a Roman military commmander (Steve Coogan).
Stiller, of course, is incredulous. He barely survives the antics of Attila the Hun. He doesn't recognize Christopher Columbus. The lions threaten to eat him. A monkey steals his keys. The cowboys and Romans begin hostilities. At dawn, everything returns to normal.
But Stiller's job is threatened when the anal museum director (Ricky Gervais from the brilliant BBC version of The Office) notices a few things awry. Meanwhile, he is developing a crush on a daytime docent (Carla Gugino).
The rest of the movie chronicles how and why the curse works, what the old geezers are up to, what happens each night leading up to a huge climax, and how all of this mayhem affects Stiller's relationship with his son.
Night At The Museum has enough heart to qualify as family fare for the holidays. The special effects are cool to contemplate, especially if you see the flick in an IMAX theatre, where the enhanced prints sharpen detail and make the spectacle larger than life. The actors are interesting.
Stiller mostly contains himself, which makes him more palatable than when he goes over the top. Ditto for Williams, who is surprisingly introspective as the wax Roosevelt. Wilson and Coogan are hysterical together.
I loved seeing Van Dyke again, although Rooney was annoying as his sidekick. Gugino remains a hottie. And Gervais is intriguing, with his off-kilter comedy based on missing words in unfinished sentences.
Put the right actors in a movie, pump up the effects and tell a good story: That's the formula for Hollywood fun.
BOTTOM LINE: Don't mistake the movie for a classic, but it has enough going for it to justify a night out in fantasyland.
(This film is rated G)
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