Night At The Museum 2

Title:
Night At The Museum 2: Battle For The Smithsonian

Cast:
Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Hank Azaria, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Mizuo Peck, Ricky Gervais, Christopher Guest, Rami Malek, Brad Garrett, Eugene Levy and Bill Hader

Genre:
Comedy, Adventure

Review:

“Remember, if a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand,” we’re told by a booming voice belonging to a giant marble Abraham Lincoln in this anticipated follow-up to the surprise hit ‘Night At The Museum’. This time there are bad guys pitted against the good ones, who were funnily enough, the villains in the first movie when they pitted themselves against a hapless Ben Stiller. Stiller’s Larry Daley, the lowly night guard who saved the New York Museum of Natural History from three crazy old dudes, is now a big shot businessman with his own infomercial company. Feeling richer but a little empty, Larry is horrified one day to be told by his old boss Dr McPhee (Ricky Gervais) that his old friends at the museum – exhibits like Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams), the Native American princess Sacagewea (Mizuo Peck), miniature cowboy Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and Roman Empire general Octavius (Steve Coogan) plus the troublemaking Kapuchean monkey Dexter – are deemed out of date and packed into crates to be shipped to the Smithsonian archives in America’s capitol. In the Smithsonian, more than historical legends come to life – famous paintings also awaken freakish worlds of their own, and the unlikeliest icons from pop start walking around and throwing hysterical one-liners. Tons of new characters fill up the screen – in big ways – including, on the baddies’ side, mobster Al Capone, Russian warlord Ivan the Terrible and even a very laughable Napoleon.

What looks like a Jonas Brothers appearance (as pesky Cupid statues flying around and singing Chipmunk-style) make for almost half the soundtrack, or at least it seems that way. What’s for sure is the much awaited cameo by a certain trash bin dweller from ‘Sesame Street’ and a Dark Lord from a galaxy far, far away – both big enough icons to pull in screen time in this mini-universe of pop history heroes. It takes a while for the movie to balloon into the freaky-fun costume parade it ends as, but it ends on a high. While the first movie told us that there’s always hope for the every guy, this one’s the next level – a clarion call to just screw it all, fly your freak flag high and just live however you want.

When Adams’ perky Amelia Earhart come-to-life tells Stiller’s night guard-turned-flashlight entrepreneur that the reason she chose to be a pilot was “for the fun of it”, and then asks, “if you don’t love it, why do you do it?”, there’s a message there. Like the golden tablet of Akhmen-Ra that brings the artifacts to life, there is something intangible here in the movie that can be found and put to some good use.

In Real Life:
The American Museum of Natural History in New York is still going strong today with membership, volunteerism and conservation programmes at an all-time high, continually updated exhibits like the famed Space Show as well as the latest, ‘Extreme Mammals’, and yup, the life-size Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton on display just inside its grand entrance. The Smithsonian Institution, located underground not far from the spot where President Obama’s inauguration took place in Washington D.C., is a facility with 19 museums and 9 research centers including the National Museums of American and Natural History (where “Rexy”, Jedediah, Octavius, Sacagewea, the Huns, the cavemen and others were in danger of being relocated to for all eternity), the National Portrait Gallery (where the “other” Teddy Roosevelt – without the arms and legs – sits) and the National Air & Space Museum (where Amelia Earhart and her plane Betsy comes to life). Amelia Earhart, played delightfully by Amy Adams, was the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean and was you could say, and the first feminist who would take no crap from men in the aviation industry and beyond. The mystery of her disappearance in 1937, at age 40, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean still fascinated people to this day even though she was declared dead in 1939.

Al Capone, Ivan the Terrible and Napoleon Bonaparte weren’t nearly as pathetic or goofy as they’re made out to be in ‘Night At The Museum 2’. We all know about Napoleon and his conquests but Capone was a merciless mobster who ruled Chicago by the tip of a Tommy gun while Ivan was an iron-fisted Tsar who masterminded a dominion over Russia that left a eastern Europe in white-faced fear for half a century. The pharaoh Kahmunrah meanwhile, is fictional, no more than a funny take on the concept of power-mad undead princes who ruled in Egyptian mythology. No prizes for spotting the world-famous painting, “The Kiss”, the universally-known bronze/marble sculpture, “The Thinker” and the pissed-off giant ‘sotong’ (the Leviathan cephalopod who yearns of returning to the ocean) but not many should know the minor character of General Custer, a popular dude in American history who was best known actually as a failed civil war cowboy-type who led 200 soldiers Rambo-style to their doom.