Night at the Museum stars Ben Stiller as Larry Daley, a would-be great inventor. (Biggest creation: The Snapper. Like The Clapper, only much less popular.) In danger of being evicted (again) and a disappointment to his son, especially compared to the kid’s over-the-top businessman stepdad (played by Paul Rudd), Larry comes to accept that he has to get a “real” job. He ends up as night watchman at New York’s Museum of Natural History.
Larry’s replacing a team of three veterans who’ve been forcibly retired. They’re played by Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs, and those three are terrific! Kids may recognize Van Dyke from Mary Poppins, but even if they (or you) haven’t seen any of the three before, they’ll know they’re good.
The old guys give Larry a quick tour, then leave him with the keys, a set of instructions, and the warning not to let anything in, or out. Pretty soon, we all find out what that means – everything in the museum comes alive at night. That’s everything from the T Rex skeleton to the Easter Island stone carving to Teddy Roosevelt and his horse.
Larry spends a while getting the hang of night duty, and just about the time he has it working pretty well and is ready to show off for his kid, the spectacle stops working. Why? Nefarious doings by the deposed trio. How Larry, and the museum denisons, deal with that takes up the last third of the movie.
Night at the Museum has terrific special effects (and you can learn a lot about how they were produced on the DVD extras). They’re a big part of the success of the film. But the performances are also great. Besides Stiller, who’s just perfect as the somewhat hapless Larry, and the watchman trio, there’s Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt, Owen Wilson as a three-inch tall Wild West gunfighter and Steve Coogan as his Roman soldier counterpart, Ricky Gervais as the museum manager, and Carla Gugino as a museum docent who befriends Larry. Throw in Attila the Hun (one of my personal favorites here), Christopher Columbus, Egyptian pharoh Ahkmenrah, Sacajawea, some cavemen, a monkey, and assorted other animals and historic figures, and you’ve got a movie with fun everywhere you look.
Night at the Museum was produced and directed by Shawn Levy. I enjoyed his Cheaper by the Dozen movies, but didn’t know much more about his film work, but I’m a confirmed fan now. He’s the focus of several of the special features, and just seems like a lot of fun as well as being a really hardworking guy.
As to those special features: The set-up on the discs is that you’re touring the museum. Disc One has the feature, with two optional commentary tracks, one with Levy and the other with the writers, Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon. I confess I didn’t listen to them, but since there’s a lot of talk in the featurettes about all the improvisation that went on and on-the-set changes, I suspect they may grouse about those during their commentary!
Disc Two has two featurettes on how the Museum of Natural History and its exhibits were recreated (fascinating stuff), how to direct this kind of film (apparently, it involves a lot of pretending to be animals, dinosaurs, etc., and chasing your star down hallways), costuming, and a making-of. Most of the film’s stars appear throughout these, including Stiller, Van Dyke, Rooney, Williams, Gervais and Gugino.
There are also a number of deleted scenes and longer takes of some scenes; none of the deletions seems to be much of a loss, but they’re interesting to see. The blooper reel is pretty funny, and features a lot of Williams and Gervais.
You also get a Comedy Central special on the making of the film, a storyboard to finished scene comparison, and two shows produced for Fox Movie Channel, one on how the scene where Larry first sees the T Rex alive was produced, and then the most interesting, to me, feature of all. That’s an episode of Life After Film School, where three film students have a Q and A session with Shawn Levy. He gives them great advice (among many, many other things, he tells them they’ll have to work very hard and treat EVERY job, no matter how small, as the most important job they’ll ever have) and also has some great stories about making this film.
Night at the Museum really is tremendous fun. It’s also great PR for the Museum of Natural History, and if it gets kids laughing and gets them interested in history, that’s a bonus. Definitely one you can watch repeatedly without getting bored.
Technical specs: Language options are English (5.1 Dolby Surround), Spanish and French (both Dolby Surround). Subtitles in English or Spanish; captioning available.