182: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (PG) - 2009 - Runtime: 105 minutes
Starring: Ben Stiller, Amy Adams
Director: Shawn Levy

If you look at the movie poster to the right, you can pretty much guess how this movie is going to be. They're just going to throw as much shit at you as possible and hopefully some of it will be funny and good. I really didn't want to see this but it was really the only choice my family could watch over the Thanksgiving weekend. And they all fell asleep during the movie.

I really did enjoy the first movie. Whatever mojo they had going worked really well. It was just well put together, the pacing worked and seeing Dick Van Dyke play some steroid-induced bad guy was pretty funny. Plus Steve Coogan as Octavius was pretty frickin' hilarious. So what do you get in the next one? Some cameos by the characters in the first movie and a brand new host of history's greatest thugs and heroes. Yawn. There's just way too much of everything. Hank Azaria as an ancient pharaoh really tries too hard to be some goofball character. Why does he have a lisp and an British accent? I don't know, apparently that's funny. And his henchman, Napoleon, Al Capone and Ivan the Terrible could have been funny, but they don't get enough screen time. The only decent character was Amy Adams' Amelia Earhart. What made the first movie great? Octavius and Jebediah, the T-Rex and the monkey. They all play second fiddle to a new host of characters that all suck. Even Bill Hader's Custer really isn't that funny. They pretty much took all the good stuff from the first one and decided to throw it out the window.

The other problem I had with this movie was the continuity from the first movie. Where's that chick Larry hooked up with at the end of the first movie? Why is he an inventor now? I guess I have a problem with this in most sequels & franchises. It's like some events never existed in the past movies. I guess that's why I never got into the Bond films (except the new ones - at least Quantum of Solace managed to acknowledge Casino Royale) - there's pretty much no evidence of past exploits and events. For some reason, it really bothers me!

But to make matters worse, the plot is just as bad as the poorly written characters. It's just all over the place and the bad guy pharaoh's evil plot doesn't seem very evil or grand. It's just written in as an excuse for Larry to run all over the place with Amelia. And that's supposed to be his love interest, too BTW. I know, it sounds stupid and it is stupid! But somehow he finds a girl that happens to look like Amy Adams/Amelia Earhart at the end of the movie. And they supposedly share a connection. You know he's going to hook up with her and soon Larry's becoming sort of a man whore by now.

It's just a bad movie all around and I will not be watching the third movie when it eventually comes out. I'm going to avoid that one like the plague, hence:

Rating: Avoid Like the Plague