Simply for fun - Night at the Museum
HILARIOUS: Night at the Museum
Genre: Adventure comedy
Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Robin Williams, Carla Gugino
Storyline: The new night watch man at the Museum of National History has to deal with the exhibits coming alive each night.
Bottomline: Funnier than you'd think
Sometimes, when people need a laugh, an escapist caper does the trick nicely. And provided you are willing to suspend your disbelief and submit yourself to watching Ben Stiller being bitch-slapped by a monkey, Shawn Levy's `Night at the Museum' works in this capacity.
The film is based on a 1993 children's story, `The Night at the Museum' by Milan Trenc. This isn't a genre you'd pin on one of the best onscreen comic partnership Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson — Stiller's uptightness offset by Wilson's loopy, sleazy charm. `Night' has none of the sexually-wise, adult knowing of `Zoolander' and `Starsky and Hutch'.
But when Wilson appears as Jedediah, the head of a miniature cowboy display, the film's worth goes up a few notches. As Wilson's appearance is not in the credits, it was probably meant as a surprise, but leaving out this detail would probably cause a lot of people to dismiss the film as a `Jumanji'-type children's flick.
Misleading start
The beginning of the story is rather misleading, and suggests that you are in for several minutes of wilted family boo-hoo. Stiller plays Larry Daley, who is divorced, has difficulty keeping a job and is rapidly losing the respect of his little boy. Desperate to prevent himself from being evicted, he takes on the job of the night watchman at the Museum of Natural History.
He hadn't bargained for playing fetch with a dinosaur skeleton, being chased by various animals in the Africa section and being bullied by an Easter Island stone head who wants `gum gum.'
In an interview, Ben Stiller said he watched Tom Cruise in the `Mission Impossible' series to copy his running technique. You may not recognise this, but he does do a lot of running.
Children would find this film fascinating with the impressive graphics. And as long as you aren't planning to pick holes in the script, it works well in a chuckle-snort way.
SUSAN MUTHALALY
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