Night at the Museum (2006)

Night at the Museum (2006)

6/10

Starring

Ben Stiller

Carla Gugino

Dick Van Dyke

Robin Williams

Directed by Shawn Levy

I never had the privilege of reading the 32-page 1993 children’s book (The Night at the Museum by Milan Trenc) this movie is based on before seeing the film. When I did watch it, I was impressed by the level of adventure packed into less than two hours.
It was fun, funny, and the thrills kept coming. The cast included numerous well-recognized actors, so there was something for everyone. The CGI was well done, and the movie itself did such a great job that it deserved a pat on the back from the producers.

Night at the Museum is a movie I stumbled upon on TV without knowing much about it beforehand, and I ended up sitting through the whole thing. Ben Stiller delivered A+ acting in this movie, playing a security guard at a museum.
Ben Stiller’s character, Larry, is a night-shift security guard at the American Museum of Natural History. Larry is divorced, not getting along well with his ex, and his ten-year-old son is his world. He took the job hoping to impress him.

He was hired to replace the retiring security guards: Cecil Fredericks (Dick Van Dyke), Gus (Mickey Rooney), and Reginald (Bill Cobbs). During Larry’s shift—without any warning from the previous guards—the entire museum comes to life at night. Here’s a brief list of what Larry had to deal with:

• A Tyrannosaurus skeleton that behaves like a dog.
• A mischievous capuchin monkey named Dexter.
• Warring miniature factions of cowboys and Roman soldiers, led by Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and General Octavius (Steve Coogan).
• Attila the Hun and his army.
• One of the only reasonable figures in the museum, a wax model of Theodore Roosevelt (Robin Williams), who comes to his aid.

Larry is shocked and scared by these events and loses control of the museum until Roosevelt calms him down and explains what’s happening.
The exhibits started coming to life every night after the arrival of an Egyptian artifact called the Tablet of Akhmenrah. Roosevelt informs Larry about the dangers of leaving the museum in chaos and emphasizes the need to keep things in order and its occupants safe.

Things get tricky when Larry discovers that some people are trying to steal from the museum and make off with one of its artifacts.
The movie wasn’t well-received by critics, even though it did well at the box office, making more than five times its production cost and selling huge numbers of DVDs.