THE LATEST ENTRY in the genre of “sequels nobody asked for,”
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian follows the 2006
kiddie flick that starred Ben Stiller as Larry, a night guard for New
York City’s Museum of Natural History. If you missed the first
installment, the museum held a magical Egyptian tablet that brought
every exhibit to life. At the start of Smithsonian, Stiller has
quit his museum job to start a successful gadget company, and in his
absence, all the exhibits have been packed away for storage at the
Smithsonian in Washington, DC.
The magical tablet goes with them, too, so I bet you can guess what
happens: The entire Smithsonian collection becomes a carnival of
historical characters brought to life! One of the newly animated
figures is a nasty Egyptian pharaoh, Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria, doing a
variation on Vincent Price), who has evil plots aplenty, so Stiller
rushes down to save his friends.
It’s all eye-rollingly silly, but while the first Night at the
Museum was a strident, obnoxious mess, Smithsonian achieves
a fevered level of madcap goofiness. For every chorus of Einstein
bobble-heads singing, “That’s the way, uh uh, uh huh, I like it,”
there’s Azaria hilariously lisping within an inch of his life. Every
time winged cherubs (played by the Jonas Brothers) cheesily serenade
Stiller and Amelia Earhart (a strong, saucy Amy Adams), there’s a
gigantic statue of Abraham Lincoln that smashes everything in sight. If
you’re the type of person who gets a kick out of seeing General Custer
(Bill Hader) sharing the screen with Owen Wilson (who, remember, played
Eli Cash in The Royal Tenenbaums), or Darth Vader facing off
against Ivan the Terrible (Christopher Guest), you might like all of
this more than you think.
Oh, there’s also a monkey wearing a spacesuit.