Ben Stiller's second night at the museum is a notable improvement, writes DONALD CLARKE
A FAVOURITE late-night pastime of boozed-up cinema fans involves identifying sequels that were better than the films that preceded them. You should know the list by now: The Godfather Part II, Bride of Frankenstein, The Empire Strikes Back, Evil Dead IIand so forth.
Such conversations tend to focus exclusively on series that are worth crossing the road to see. Who bothers to point out that Miss Congeniality 2: Armed Fabulousis actually seven per cent less appalling than the earlier Sandra Bullock atrocity? Can it really be worth arguing that the mock-Celtic skulduggery in Leprechaun 2is more jaw-dropping than that in the first killer-cobbler movie?
Come to think of it, last week's papers were alive with reviewers finding different ways of clarifying how facile it was to point out that Angels & Demonswas better than The Da Vinci Code. Why, that's like saying you're better off drinking sewage than battery acid. That's like saying you'd rather be guillotined than boiled in oil.
The first Night at the Museumfilm had quite a lot in common with The Da Vinci Code. Both pictures involved harried men scurrying around darkened museums in search of an ancient relic that did something important when you put it somewhere significant. Neither film was much cop, but the Ben Stiller comedy did, at least, have ambulatory dinosaur skeletons and fast-talking miniature cowboys.
Where is all this leading? Oh, yes. The bulkily titled Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonianis not exactly a good film, but it is significantly more entertaining than its lucrative predecessor (and not just because there's less Robin Williams in it). Indeed, if you can shut out the product placement for Washington, DC's most famous museum, various 20th Century Fox products and, most nauseatingly, Barack Obama – "I believe a good man rules this Union," a tiny Roman emperor says – then you might find yourself having a reasonably decent time.
Since the last film clattered to its conclusion, Stiller’s hitherto unmotivated layabout has forged a career selling useless gadgets via mindless infomercials. Now an upstanding, driven guy, he tries not to concern himself with the dinosaurs, historical figures, cavemen and stuffed monkeys that came alive during his earlier job as a security guard at the Natural History Museum.
One evening, while in the midst of an important deal, he learns that his former friends, now stored beneath the Smithsonian Museum, are under threat from a revivified Egyptian Pharaoh. He packs his trunks and heads for the capital.
Not bothering themselves with a plot, the film-makers simply throw a bunch of stuff at the screen and trust that some of it sticks. Happily, their prayers are mostly answered.
Amy Adams is so wonderful as a screwball version of Amelia Earhart that you long for somebody to cast her in a real biopic of the aviator. Grappling with dialogue composed of faux-1930s slang, Amy comfortably confirms her growing reputation as a firecracker in the mould of Jean Arthur or Barbara Stanwyck.
Hank Azaria has fun playing with Boris Karloff's lisp in the villain's role, and a sequence during which various well-known artworks – Hopper's Nighthawks, Wood's American Gothic, Rodin's Thinker– come alive is both gorgeous and spooky. (Though it is worth pointing out that none of those pieces are currently to be found in the Smithsonian.)
Have the film-makers salvaged enough dignity to make us hope for a third episode? Hardly. But we should at least thank them for offering us one more answer to a popular saloon bar query.
Directed by Shawn Levy. Starring Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson, Hank Azaria, Christopher Guest, Robin Williams, Jonah Hill, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais PG cert, gen release, 105 min
