Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

I’m not what you would call a “Ben Stiller fan.” In fact, I’ve held a long-standing grudge against him. It’s mainly because of his uncanny ability to fool me into seeing his movies. You see, every time he releases a film, I see the trailer and think, “Wow! That looks so funny! I can’t wait to see it!” And every time I see something he stars in, I walk out saying, “That was terrible. I can’t believe I was excited for that.” This applies to all of his movies. Yes, this applies to Something About Mary. Yes, this applies to Starsky & Hutch. Yes, this applies to Dodgeball. And yes, this even applies to Zoolander. I just don’t like his work.

But all of that changed with Night at the Museum. I saw the trailer for it and thought, “Eh… That looks like a mediocre movie. Maybe I’ll take some students to see it. At least it’ll be clean.” And then, after seeing it, I walked out saying, “That was a really great movie.”

I liked it so much that I used it as the main illustration in a lesson I did on a Sunday morning in my middle school ministry.

This, of course, did not help my problem with unmet expectations regarding Ben Stiller movies. However, I decided to be conservative in changing my outlook, and merely resigned to being a Night at the Museum fan. So when I saw that there was going to be a Part 2, I got excited all over again.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian reunites us with Stiller’s Larry Daley, now a famous infomercial guru shilling such marvels as the glow-in-the-dark flashlight. Along with his newfound fame came fortune and a change in employment. Larry no longer serves as night guard at the museum. He does, however, go back occasionally to visit his friends, the exhibits. This is where we find him at the beginning of Part 2. Unfortunately, at this visit, Larry finds out that all of his exhibit friends are being put into storage in the federal archives beneath the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. After saying goodbye, Larry receives a call late one night from Jedediah, Owen Wilson’s tiny cowboy, saying that all of the exhibits are in trouble from another bad exhibit come to life, the ancient Egyptian ruler Kamunrah (The Simpsons’ Hank Azaria). Larry quickly flies to D.C. to save all of his friends from the villain and his assembled team of other evil exhibits: Ivan the Terrible (Christopher Guest), Al Capone, and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Were my expectations met? No. But that doesn’t mean that I thought it was bad, just… a little crowded. Let me explain. One of the things I loved the most about Part 1, was that there wasn’t really a “bad guy” until the end of the movie. It was mainly about Larry confronting himself and choosing to be great. Larry had to choose to commit whole-heartedly (something he had never done before) to his job and, in the process, overcame his fear of failure. But in Part 2, we’re given an actual antagonist (Azaria’s Kamunrah). Not only that, but we’re given tons of supporting characters on both sides of the good/evil coin.

Don’t get me wrong, the supporting cast (including Amy Adams’ Amelia Earhart) is great! But there were so many people involved you can’t help but wonder if some of the characters should have been cut to make room for some more scenes from such comedic giants as Ricky Gervais, Christopher Guest, Robin Williams, Bill Hader, and Steve Coogan.

While Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian doesn’t pack quite the emotional punch of Part 1, it’s still entertaining. With added set pieces like paintings and pop art come to life, you’re always left anticipating what could possibly dance before your eyes next, which is great. That combined with some pretty solid, albeit somewhat scattered laughs, makes this a movie that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend for a date night out, but would highly recommend as a safe bet to take your teenage students too. In fact, pairing it with a visit to your local museum might make a pretty cool event…


Josh Treece is a history nerd. And seeing this movie only furthered his desire to secretly live in a museum. When he’s not thinking of ways to make that happen, he can be found ministering to teenagers.