Night at the Museum (dir. Shawn Levy, 2010) - Review

Kids’ films of the 2000s were a gentler rumbling of the culture wars that would characterise their audiences’ future. Film critics who interpreted Pixar's superhero-comedy The Incredibles as right-wing propaganda predictably found less subtle overtones in Night at the Museum- the blockbuster family Christmas comedy of 2006 saw Ben Stiller wading into a war-torn region to bring peace and civilisation to its warring tribes. One wonders if the waxworks in the Natural History Museum had been tinkering with the radioactive mineral collection before Stiller’s bumbling but well-intentioned Larry intervened.

Thankfully, these parallels are really only relevant as an edgy side take. Night at the Museum viewers past and present can likely evade such conclusions from an overwhelmingly childish offering. Parents can appreciate its relative freedom from the ubiquitous traits of kids’ films of this vintage: a slightly condescending tone (from ‘grown-up jokes’ based on pop culture or double entendre) and an overabundance of fart jokes. The film sidesteps the two-tier approach for a more egalitarian brand of comedy, with stupid, unpretentious stuff that takes the best from a range of genres, from 80s maximalist absurdity to old-timey adventure movies.

Though it merits some comparisons to Pirates of the Caribbean and perhaps Elf, Night at the Museum still a noticeable abnormality—a big-budget, live-action concoction of comedy and adventure that makes no pretense of being anything other than a two-hour romp through goofy humor, history-buff in-jokes, kooky physical comedy, and high-speed chase scenes. The first outing for Ben Stiller's neurotic security guard was something of a rarity in its time: a big-budget concoction that delivered surprisingly enriching and uncynical fare for young audiences.

The movie’s real star, New York’s Museum of Natural History, allows director Shawn Levy to blast his audience with a carnivalesque sideshow of history-adjacent vignettes. Kids who may have snored through a history lesson on the Wild West, or a biology lesson on African wildlife, can enjoy them afresh with the Disneyfied premise. Attila the Hun’s brutality gets a refresh with his gibbering pursuit of Larry; Teddy Roosevelt, in the blessed hands of Robin Williams, goes from stale bureaucrat to playful, kindly father figure; and Sacajawea comes to inspire not only the incompetent Lewis and Clark trapped in her display, but also Rebecca (Carla Gugino), the museum guide who has to clean up Larry’s blunders.

Is Night at the Museum historically accurate? No. Is it highbrow culture? Definitely no. Is it a bit racist? Errrr. Perhaps the film survived the current cancel wave (as as time of writing) due to the fact that while it parades a slew of “outdated and harmful stereotypes” onscreen, the outdated and harmful nature of such superficial knowledge is at the heart of the plot. Levy and his visual effects team step in to do what some primary school educators cannot- adding humor and action to inspire kids into learning more, without any sense of condescension. After all, Larry knew nothing about any of the exhibits when he first arrived either.

Stiller is the perfect actor for an everyman thrust into fantasy because he does both skeptical and wide-eyed wonder so well. His Larry is able to have fun with the absurdity of it all—tying a bone to a remote control car so the T-Rex remains occupied playing fetch, tossing a wad of bubblegum into the Easter Island Head (Brad Garrett) to shut it up, and forcing miniature cowboy Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and Rome’s Octavius (Steve Coogan) to get along despite each possessing troops ready for battle. Stiller has no trouble playing the fool by throwing his whole body into a gag whose computer-generated behemoth of an adversary is added in post-production or by letting a monkey (Crystal the Monkey‘s Dexter) bite his nose and slap his face. The farce entertains enough for the plot to come later.