Night at The Museum 2: Escape from the Smithsonian

[The Apatow Crew]

I thought that line was funny aswell.

 

[Sam Fisher]

New trailer.
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=55037

 

[TwilightPro101]

Looks like good mindless fun for the family.

 

[Sam Fisher]

 

[mclay18]

A news article from Scoring Sessions has some nice color pics and a summary of the orchestral recording sessions for Night at the Museum 2, composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri (who scored the first one too):

http://scoringsessions.com/news/184/

 

[terry78]

AICN liked it somewhat to an extent, but said the main attraction is Amy Adams in the tight ass aviator pants, because they show more than they ought to.

 

[Sam Fisher]

Yeah, they were totally ripping off 300 at the end...

 

[Dave McFly]

got a free ticket when i bought a DVD a few weeks ago. liked the 1st, looking forward to the 2nd. I love the Thinker statue "Hey baby,check out the gun show going on over here, boom, boom, fire powah!"

 

[Episode29]

*I'm just gonna repost my review here, as the T4 Vs NATM thread is dying a slow death.

The original Night at the Museum was not a very good movie. It was mostly frantic and dumb, with an over-emphasis on loud special-effects and Ben Stiller awkwardly mugging for the camera. BUT, when not being overly abrasive, it didn’t shy away from revealing a certain gentle and whimsical spirit, which made its simplistic and uninspired family message digestible and even slightly moving. Museum also boasted gorgeous cinematography by Guillermo Navarro, with lustrous, fuzzy-fantastical brown and yellow hues helping accentuate the film’s magical premise, and featured an oddly soothing performance by Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt, which almost erased my spiteful long-held memories of Patch Adams.

Interesting then, that the sequel, subtitled Battle of the Smithsonian – if ever a title promised strident frenzy... – makes the profoundly wingnut-minded decision to do away with almost all of those positive attributes. The earlier film’s focus on family, with Stiller’s single-dad Larry Daley learning to become a dependable provider and positive role model, is thrown clear out the ever-loving window, with his son (Jake Cherry) now downgraded to an exposition-spewing bit part. Similarly, Williams’ screen-time is cut in half, and Navarro’s incandescent work has been dropped in favour of the mood-killing, flat work of John Schwartzman. Sacre bleu, what gives?!

Switching extremes, Larry Daley is no longer an undependable, unemployed sponge, but rather an undependable, workaholic *****bag, who carries around a Blackberry and talks on his cell phone a lot. Apparently, in the short-time between films (a year-and-a-half, tops.), Stiller’s character has managed to parlay his museum nightwatchman gig into a lucrative inventing career, hocking glow-in-the-dark flashlights on TV alongside George Foreman. However, all is not well at New York’s Museum of Natural History where, if you’ll recall, the exhibits come to life at night through the power of a mystical – and plasticky-looking – Egyptian tablet. Due to demands for modern technological learning tools, curator Dr. McPhee (Ricky Gervais) has decided to replace the museum’s star attractions with multimedia-friendly holograms.

Nevertheless, there is still adventure to be had, as the goofy gang of wax figures and miniatures are shipped off to Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian archives, which becomes a lot more chaotic when the magical tablet restores the livelihood of the evil, but dim-witted, warlord Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria – camping it up with a performance which ostensibly combines Jeremy Irons with Dame Edna). Dejected and peevish after many years of slumber, he declares war on the lovable exhibi-crew and dedicates himself to using the tablet to lure an army of monstrous demon warriors into the real world. After receiving a frantic call from pint-sized cowboy Jedediah Smith (Owen Wilson), Larry skedaddles over to D.C., infiltrates the gargantuan storehouse, and teams up with Amelia Earhart (lovable Amy Adams with a Katharine Hepburn accent and very, very tight pants), in a heroic quest to save the world from certain doom.

If all this sounds convoluted beyond all get-go, that’s okay because returning director Shawn Levy has given the story even less thought than I just did transcribing it. Whether the WGA strike is to blame or not, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian seems remarkably script-free. Rather, we sit, in slowly-dawning horror, as Levy repeatedly turns his camera on his comically gifted actors for stupefying long stretches, as they (seemingly) improv sweat-stained stretches of comedic “gold”. There is one endless scene featuring Stiller riffing with a gung-ho guard played by Jonah Hill that should be bottled up, labelled and sold as “Anti-Funny”. Also, if I had to guess, Azaria fabricated 90% of his dialogue on the fly.

Even the effects forget to infuse any sense of joviality or enchantment to the kid-friendly enterprise. The first film contained occasional moments of actual wonder, whereas in Smithsonian it just feels like insipid CG junk-candy. Majestic towering statues, splendorous paintings and captivating denizens of the deep unceremoniously leap into action, only to be overwhelmed by the frenetic bursts of 1’s and 0’s carelessly erupting around them. There’s even a chaotic scene spoofing 300, for no discernable reason other than to shamelessly mimic a recent hit film. With all the money and resources available, why not inspire your young audience and paint dazzling creative visions which they can take with them when they leave the theatre? Only one infinitesimal moment manages to become something special; as Stiller and Adams soar over the Washington monument’s reflecting pool, lovely echoes of Lois and Superman’s night-flight in 1978’s Superman: The Movie can be almost be heard.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian should be ashamed of itself. It’s the most contemptuous and worrying brand of high-gloss entertainment: a shamelessly pandering attempt at robbing young movie-goers of the gifts which can be derived from remarkable visual sights and stirring, fanciful storytelling. After sitting through this inert, turgid mess, I would recommend that the filmmakers join alongside future exhibits and get stuffed.

1.5 out of 5

 

[Sam Fisher]

got a free ticket when i bought a DVD a few weeks ago. liked the 1st, looking forward to the 2nd. I love the Thinker statue "Hey baby,check out the gun show going on over here, boom, boom, fire powah!"

That was pretty funny. The first movie was way better, but this isn't completely terrible either.

 

[terry78]

See, I'm thinking Governator Salvation will still be number one, but it'll be extremely close with Museum in number 2. Star Trek as 3 and I suspect Dance Flick at either four or five.

 

[Sam Fisher]

It's sad Dance Flick will be so high

 

[terry78]

It's the Wayans. I respect their spoof efforts more than the other ones.

 

[TheVileOne]

This movie was unbelievably bad. Scenes just drag on and on. The gags were like Family Guy when the characters just stand and bicker for seemingly hours. Amy Adams was hot yeah, but I mean even in a movie like this nothing made sense.

I think everyone in this movie was just doing it for the paycheck.

Ben Stiller. I just don't get Ben Stiller. How he can go from doing something totally fun and brilliant like Tropic Thunder and then this. I get this is a family movie, but I mean you can still make a family movie and not make it absolutely ******ed.

 

[Symbiotic]

Saw it last night. Wasn't horrible, but I really hated how

Spoiler

mostly everyone from the New York museum spent the first two thirds of the movie hiding in the damn crate.

 

[TNC9852002]

Just as much nonsense and foolishness as the first, but this one definitely didn't seem to flow as well. I'd say it's a 6/10 in general. It was entertaining for the most part.

 

[DW4]

For those that have seen it, how as the Darth Vader scene?

 

[BLACK-SPIDEY]

For those that have seen it, how as the Darth Vader scene?

Spoiler

It was....funny, i guess, he tries to do the force on kah mun rah and he just tells him "whats that, whats that thing on your hand? is that your breathing? and whats with the cape where are we going to? a soap opera? no i dont think so, only truly evil villians allowed" i think it went something like that.

 

[TNC9852002]

Trailers shown during my viewing:

-Bandslam
-Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
-Land of the Lost (new/PG)
-Aliens in the Attic
-Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
-Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel (teaser)

 

[terry78]

This flick beat Terminator.....by about 10 mil. Well, shut my mouth.

 

[StarkTheProdigy]

i saw it and enjoyed it. i will say if you didn't like the first one at all, don't waste your time and see this one. i think this one was great, i loved the characters and i loved how something was going on every min. of the movie. this is a great movie to see if you just want to have a good time, and you don't feel like seeing a complex movie. the only thing this is missing is a certain "charm" the first one was missing, i have no idea what it was, but the first will always be a classic imo. 7.5/10

 

[The Guard]

The first one was silly as hell. Why would anyone expect this one to be any different? Saw it late last night and thought it was fairly entertaining for what it is. There are some clever things done with various Smithsonian exhibits. I really don't see why the underworld stuff even had to be in this movie (what's that have to do with a museum coming to life?), and the end where the museum stays open late but everything is alive and the public is none the wiser is incredibly hard to swallow.

That horribly annoying kid who played his son and couldn't act in the first movie is still in the movie, but he's in it much less (about five minutes, thank God, though he still cannot act for ****), although now he's like some 10 year old computer hacker. Shawn Levy still shoots a beautiful film, though, and the effects tended to be pretty good. Highlight of the movie is easily Hank Azara's Egyptian villain, Steve Coogan's Claudius "charging" across the White House lawn and the "300" inspired battle sequence with Claudius and the cowboy Owen Wilson plays.

 

[Episode29]

Shawn Levy still shoots a beautiful film, though,.

*Chokes*

 

[TheVileOne]

Shawn Levy is a terrible comedy director. Terrible. The worst. He's a terrible storyteller.

Its not just about silliness, the movie had virtually no script. They probably had the actors just improv most everything.

Ben Stiller is sort of becoming like Steve Martin how he will do something totally horrible and then something really good inbetween.

 

[Dr. Evil]

So Ben actually went full ****** with this movie. I saw it and it was awful.

Did he not listen to a blackfaced Robert Downey Jr.? Never go full ******.