Another Night, Another Museum

Submitted by Intertexty on Mon, 05/18/2009 - 12:48

Review

by Shawn Levy

Twentieth Century Fox (2009)

The Talent Behind The Talismans

The first instalment of the family comedy Night at The Museum (2006), where history literally comes to life at a museum, was laden with legendary actors trying to out do one another in the improvisation stakes. Their range was awesome, from Mickey Rooney’s euphemistic insults, “Start mopping, hot dog,” to the nefarious appearance of family-movie veteran Dick Van Dyke – with Owen Wilson, Robin Williams and the two Brits Ricky Gervais and Steve Coogan thrown in for good measure.

Historical figures and artefacts are portrayed as holograms, and brought to life by some top-notch actors. Voiceover artist Hank Azaria (who's played everyone from Moe to Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons) claimed to have had a ball playing Kahmunrah: “He’s so arch and evil and he’s always making these large pronouncements. He has a kind of Boris Karloff delivery, where he’s trying very hard to be scary but in the modern world it comes off as a bit more amusing.”

Both instalments of the Night at the Museum are directed by Shawn Levy who cut his teeth directing television shows like Lassie and The Famous Jett Jackson. The legendary Hollywood actors might not return in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) but a great line-up of comedy writers (Williams, Wilson, Coogan and Gervais) helped put some Hollywood gloss on antiquity.

Sequels aren’t Equal

Adhering to the first rule of sequals - make everything bigger - this second instalment takes place in the world's largest and most visited (25m visitors per year) museum complex, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The Smithsonian was founded in 1846 with a mysterious $500,000 bequest from the British scientist James Smithson who, though he never stepped foot in the U.S., wanted the country to have a special place devoted to the “increase and diffusion of knowledge.”

Although the Smithsonian publically welcomed the film-makers to film inside the museums, it was a limited welcome. A lot of the filming had to be done on a replica set, created by production designer Claude Paré. The Air & Space Museum is one of the largest sets ever created: a two-story set, 80 feet tall by 360 feet long, replicating the same spectacular steel-and-glass architecture of the original.

So What's The Story?

Well, former museum security guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) finds out that his once inanimate friends and artefacts of the Museum of Natural History are at the end of their popularity cycle. High-tech holograms have led to them being boxed and shipped to the huge archives in the US capital where fresh dangers await them.

The 24carat-gold scroll from the Tomb of Ahkmenrah (Rami Malek), which gives the artefacts life, is now on it’s way to the Smithsonian where Ahkmenrah’s older, and meaner, brother Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria) is in a 3,000 year-old slumber. Ahkmenrah’s tablet was the prized possession of the Museum’s occupants, guarded by the memorable 20ft Jackals from the first film. Author of the original Night at the Museum novel, Milan Trenc, presumably had in mind Egyptian God of Gods 'Amon-Re' when naming Ahkmenrah. But instead of oozing omnipotence, Trenc’s character is a boyish cad with a decent command of English, picked up whilst in the Egyptology department at Cambridge.

When the tablet arrives at the Smithsonian and starts bringing all the artefacts and images to life, Kahmunrah plots to bring the real world to its knees. He enlists the help of a multi-generational “axis of evil” in Ivan the Terrible (Christopher Guest), Napoleon Bonaparte (Alain Chabat) and Al Capone (Jon Bernthal) – not forgetting an Army of the Underworld, too.

With the help of old buddies like the Roman Octavius (Steve Coogan), Attila The Hun (Patrick Gallagher) and new friends in Albert Einstein (Eugene Levy), Larry has only one night to restore order to the National Mall before dawn when all history will turn to dust.

So what's next for this winning format? Director Levy certainly thinks that there's life yet in those old bones. He enthuses about the endless potential to create stories, and portray histories, from all sorts of time periods, legends and geographies.

What might Napoleon ask a Roman Emperor or how might Einstein interact with a Neanderthal? For Levy, the concept is full of possibilities: “These are conversations that never could have happened in real life,” he says, “but they bring great potential for comedy as well as a little historical inspiration.” For comedy and inspiration alone, it's well worth a trip (or two, or three) to the Museum.

About The Author

Andrew McWhirter

After prostituting the English language as a copywriter in the murky world of advertising Andrew returned to education, where he specialised in Film and Communication at Glasgow Caledonian University and Critical Writing on Film at The University of Glasgow. He’s about to embark on a PhD entitled: Film Criticism in the Digital Age, which complements his film writing for publications as diverse as Tribune, The Drouth, and The Skinny through to lifestyle magazines under DC Publishing. When he’s not researching high-end cultural essays on film or dropping the odd quip into a What’s On Guide, he’s out jogging and enjoying family time, or most likely back at his computer screen trying his hardest to acquire funding for documentary filmmaking!

Last three pieces by this author: Robot in Disguise: Dr. Zahi Hawass , Woo's Wish: East/West Unison , Top 5 Archaeology Movies