Movie Review 26: Night at the Museum 2

Title: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

Director: Shawn Levy

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) the night guard from the first series of the movie is not an owner of Daley Inventions which manufactured and sells his inventions. He later found out that most of the Museum of Natural History pieces are going to be moved to the Federal Archives at Washington. While being moved to their new home, Dexter (the monkey) stole the tablet which brings the museum artifacts to life and inadvertently revived an evil firaun, Kah Mun Rah. Larry rush to the Smithsonian Institute before this new evil being bring his army to conquer the world!

I'll have to say right out the the second instalment is just not as exciting and good as the the first one even thought there are more actions in this second movie. Kah Mun Rah (Hank Azaria) does provide some comic relief as an evil firaun but it pretty soon became a really lame comic excuse.

There are also what I would say some theoretical contradictions in the movie. From what I gathered from the first movie, the displays in the museum are supposed to come alive only when the tablet is in the museum. However, at the end of the movie, you can see a display being able to stay 'alive' even though it's far away from the tablet. Also, the whole death threat is just an useless threat if Larry would just take the tablet away from the museum so that the displays became 'dead' and then sneak back into the museum to save his friends! And shouldn't there be some night guards in the biggest museum in the world? How is there no one to come poking their nose when the whole museum went nuts?

As I said, yes, there were some comedic reliefs but as usual, it just seemed strained and without "Bony" the Tyrannosaurus, things are just not so exciting anymore.

Observation: It really boggles the mind as to how Larry is able to hide the fact that the museum displays came to life only at night but not at the day in his newly improved museum available to the public. (You'll only know what I'm talking about if you watch the movie :P)

Bottomline: Would not be my choice of comedy of the week

Bamboo Rating: 2.5 / 5.0