In the next installment of the Night At The Museum film franchise our hero, night security guard Larry must discover why the magical tablet that brings all the museum displays to life is beginning to lose its power. As one of a handful of family friendly films released for the Christmas holiday period we check out whether this will be a good one to see with the littlies.
Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) is back and we’re quite a few years on from the previous two films. He’s in charge of the “night program” and about to put on a big show of all the museum displays to a large group of rich supporters and benefactors when suddenly all of the displays start acting weirdly and terrorising all the guests. Larry and Ahkmenrah (Rami Malek) discover that something strange is happening to the magical tablet that brings all of them to life. Ahkmenrah’s only suggestion is for them to ask his father who gave him the tablet, the only problem is he’s in the British Museum in London. Larry hatches a plan to get them to London, and as our cast of characters make their way into the Museum at night, they discover that the newly awoken displays are all confused and potentially not as helpful as they’d like.
All of our favourite characters have returned, including Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) and the dynamic pint-sized duo of cowboy Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and Roman soldier Octavius (Steve Coogan) and Dexter the mischievous Capuchin monkey. Our new characters include a Neanderthal who strikes a remarkable resemblance to Larry and calls himself Laa (also played by Ben Stiller), there’s Sir Lancelot (Dan Stevens ) and British night guard Tilly (Aussie comedy star Rebel Wilson) and Ahkmenrah’s father, the Pharaoh Merenkahre (Sir Ben Kingsley) who ultimately knows the “secret of the tomb” and what it is that powers the tablet’s magical ability. To add to Larry’s troubles his now almost an-adult son Nicky (Skyler Gisondo) is not sure what he wants to do with his life, insisting on taking a gap year and not going to college now that he’s finished high school. And he’s potentially about to stumble down the same uncertain road as Larry did when he was younger. This causes Larry to re-evaluate how good a father figure he is for his son and whether or not he’s given his son enough guidance to make the right decisions in life.
Director Shawn Levy is back and this time he has Michael Handelman and David Guion to handle the screenplay and script duties. Levy has managed to keep the Night At The Museum series a consistently fun family romp with both the previous films and stays true to that with Secret of the Tomb. Where the second film was a little too heavy on cast and probably too overloaded with new characters, Levy opts to stick to the strongest characters and minimise the amount of new faces onscreen as well as limiting those new faces’ screentime. The story itself is pretty straightforward, bad things are happening and our hero has to figure it out quickly otherwise everybody is doomed, so this makes it nice and simple for kids to follow. Both Handelman and Guion wrote the screenplays for Dinner for Schmucks and The Ex so their comedy direction focuses on precisely timed jokes, pop culture references and existing character’s traits that we know from previous films. So this tends to be better for the adults so I guess it’s a win-win situation here for families.
Some of the best lines in the film come from the chemistry between Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan’s characters Jedediah and Octavius, and reports were that they were to have a spin-off film of their own before the unfortunate and untimely death of Robin Williams canned that plan. And speaking of the legendary great Williams, this would be his last onscreen role, and for many of us who are fans of his work it was hard to not shed a little tear and get emotional during his final scene with Stiller. Somehow the sage wise words from Teddy Roosevelt almost felt like Williams himself was parting ways with all of us. Out of our new faces Rebel Wilson does a fantastic job, particularly in her first back and forth scene with Stiller, which we found out some of it was ad-libbed and kept in the film because Levy really enjoyed their banter. Her British accent isn’t the greatest and I’m almost certain I heard her Aussie slip in there a couple of times, but I can overlook that considering how marginal her onscreen time was. Dan Stevens’ Sir Lancelot gets the most time out of our new faces, which is a bonus for us ladies since he’s quite the looker in his medieval knight outfit. As a newly awoken museum display his portrayal of a confused and disoriented but overly helpful Sir Lancelot is endearing but not everything is quite all it seems cracked up to be with this one. And lastly when it comes to screentime, there’s a really amazing cameo in the film which I refuse to spoil because it’s such a treat and is a really funny scene in the movie. When you see it, I’m sure you’ll love it.
There are a couple of nitpicky issues I have with the movie, the first of which mainly relates to the fact that a good chunk of time near the start is spent on our group trying to track down Jedediah and Octavius after they’re separated from the main group. By the time Larry realises what needs to be done in order to save everybody, it all seems like it’s rushed for time to wrap things up by the 98 minute runtime. Surely they could have designated a couple of people to do the searching whilst the rest of the group went off to find the Pharaoh and solve the tablet problem? Another is the lack of a strong female presence in the film. Yes Rebel Wilson’s Tilly is here, and Sacajawea (Mizuo Peck) also makes a return, but neither of their characters are given a significant moment in the film that proves vital to the overall story or a solution to the problems at hand. Admittedly both of these are adult notions and logical thoughts that are directed at what is supposed to be a kids movie at the end of the day, so again, I can overlook in favour of enjoying the fantasy.
This is a fun family film that also manages to somewhat redeem the franchise and give it a fitting end. Once again combining fantasy with heart and the real-life struggles of family and raising your kids right. There’s only one majorly scary scene in this movie too, so I’d say it’s fairly safe for the younger crowd too. This is supposedly the last film in the series, though with the way it ends it does potentially leave it open to having the torch passed to Rebel Wilson’s Tilly to take over from Ben Stiller’s Larry. I’m not sure how I’d feel about that considering that they did a lovely job of wrapping the film up and its characters stories quite nicely. Lastly bonus points to Levy for closing the film with “Got To Be Real” by Cheryl Lynn and continuing the tradition of using a classic soul/funk/disco song as the closing party song in each film, because kids everywhere need to know how awesome disco music is
Review Score: THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Running Time: 98 minutes
Night At The Museum: Secret of the Tomb is out Christmas Day 25 December 2014 through Twentieth Century Fox Pictures
———-
