Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian (Monkey Mischief Pack) DVD Review
Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 12.18.2009
It's another night and another museum...can Ben Stiller's family adventure sequel score on DVD, or is it more of the same?
Directed by: Shawn Levy Written by: Thomas Lennon
Starring: Ben Stiller - Larry Daley Amy Adams - Amelia Earhart Owen Wilson - Jedidiah Smith Hank Azaria - Kahmunrah Christopher Guest - Ivan The Terrible Alain Chabat - Napoleon Bonaparte Steve Coogan - Gaius Octavius Ricky Gervais - Dr. McPhee Bill Hader - General George Armstrong Custer Jon Bernthal - Al Capone Patrick Gallagher - Attila The Hun Jake Cherry - Nicky Daley Rami Malek - Ahkmenrah Mizuo Peck - Sacagawea Robin Williams - Theodore Roosevelt Brad Garrett - The Easter Island Head Jonas Brothers - The Cherubs Jay Baruchel - sailor Joey Motorola Jonah Hill - Brandon
DVD Release Date: 12/1/2009 Running Time: 105 minutes
Rated PG for mild action and brief language.
Ben Stiller's career has been one of surprising successes. The multi-talented actor, director, writer and producer first came to the public consciousness with 1992's The Ben Stiller Show on MTV, based on the strength of his independent work and a stint on Saturday Night Live . This parlayed into an equally short-lived show of the same name on Fox, which would end up leading into his film career. Directing came first before he hit it big with the surprise hit There's Something About Mary. Co-starring fresh hot commodity Cameron Diaz, the film broke box office records for R-rated comedies and made Stiller a household name. Since then, the actor has found his resume as ever-expanding as his price tag as he's turned otherwise unremarkable films into hits. One of the best examples of this was 2006's Night at the Museum. The special effects-laden family film, directed by Shawn Levy, blew box office expectations away and ended with almost $600 million worldwide. A sequel was inevitable and this year, Levy and Stiller tried the "bigger is better approach" with Night of the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Adding a host of stars and moving the environs from New York to Washington, the film garnered very mixed reactions at best but was again a box office hit with over $400 worldwide. After that highly successful run, the film has gotten its DVD release from Fox in time for the holiday season, with a second disk billed as a "holiday gift edition" to entice parents into buying it.
The Movie
Stiller reprises his role as Larry Daley, who in the two years following his introduction to the more-than-lifelike exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History has moved on to bigger things. He's become the head of his own company who produces inventions and sells them via infomercials. He seems happy, but has also neglected his museum exhibit friends. Upon going to visit them one day, he learns that the majority of the exhibits are being moved to the Smithsonian Museum to make way for new, high-tech exhibits, with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt (Williams), Rexy the T-Rex, the Easter Island Head (Garrett) and Pharaoh Ahkmenrah (Malek). Ahkmenrah's tablet is also staying behind, which means that the others--including figurines Jedidiah (Wilson) and Octavius (Coogan), Sacagawea (Peck) and Dexter the monkey--will be moving off to be stowed lifelessly away. When Dexter steals the tablet however, the exhibits at the Smithsonian come to life...including Ahkmenrah's evil brother Kahmunrah (Azaria). Larry rushes to Washington D.C. where, with the help of his friends and Amelia Earhart (Adams), he has to try and stop Kahmunrah from opening the Gate of the Underworld to raise an army of the dead and rule the world.
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian was written by Thomas Lennon, the scribe of the first movie, based on a story outline by Robert Ben Garant. Lennon's script for the first film was silly but serviceable, and provided some good characterizations amidst the CGI characters and corny laughs. With the sequel, Lennon has gone over the top and dumbed down most of the new characters to pop culture goofs. A group of Albert Einstein bobble heads chatters on while Abraham Lincoln sounds more like Stiller or Wilson during one of their usual movie rants than anything else. The novelty of seeing historical figures interacting in the modern day is quickly lost when the Thinker is portrayed as a would-be muscle beach bodybuilder that hits on a bashful Venus Italica.
And therein lies the crux of what makes this movie such a frustrating exercise to watch. The Night at the Museum films could easily be a perfect family-friendly franchise. It's one of those rare films that have the ability to be both entertaining and informative by relating facts about the exhibits shown in the museums. The Smithsonian houses some of the greatest artifacts of American history. But instead of doing so, Lennon and director Shawn Levy (also returning for the second time) are more interested in wringing out unfunny gags. A trio of cupids that are voiced by the Jonas Brothers sing—big surprise—a Jonas Brothers song, as well "My Heart Will Go On" and a pseudo-hip-hop version of the Bee Gee's "More than a Woman." It's neither informative nor amusing, and that applies to most of the new exhibits.
The only new character that comes off particularly well is Amelia Earhart, who has enough screen time and is more of a leading character so can get the time she needs to develop. The villains of history are characterized moderately well, but the plot reeks of unoriginality. It essentially boils down to being a pastiche of the first film and the repeated plot summaries of the Mummy franchise, complete with Earhart as the spunky female love interest. One has to wonder why Garant decided that summoning the hordes of the underworld would come across well as the threat in a family-friendly adventure film, and what makes it worse that the dialogue is borderline atrocious. Lennon seems to think that repeating the same joke twice will make it twice as funny, such as a moment where Napoleon asks Larry if he and Earhart were "friends in college and just afraid now to ruin your relationship by telling the other person that you want to be more than friends, that you like-like each other?" The entire line is awkward and not very funny the first time, but Lennon decides to have Larry ask again, at which point the entire thing is repeated. Every part of the dialogue in this clunky script falls flat…again, except the banter between Earhart and Larry, which seems to be the one saving grace of the entire plot.
One thing the movie does have going for it is the visual effects, put together mostly by Rhythm and Hues Studios. Rhythm and Hues is not as well known as ILM or Weta, but they have amassed a host of excellent films (in effects, at least) to their credit such as helping on the first Narnia film, The Golden Compass, The Chronicles of Riddick and the characters of the Hulk and the Abomination in The Incredible Hulk. The studio did the effects for the first Night at the Museum so they are on comfortable ground here and within the Smithsonian they really have an opportunity to stretch their legs. We have all sorts of visual shots to have fun with, including a neat trick/plot device of the paintings coming to life which allow Larry and Amelia to travel through them…and for those inside to come out. Some of the statues that come to life are remarkably rendered, and that certainly helps the film where the story falls flat.
As much as the effects work, Shawn Levy doesn't seem too interested in pushing the envelope anywhere else. Never has a major studio effort seemed so remarkably comfortable with just resting back on what came before. Sure, there are the new characters, and the new tricks like the paintings, but Levy makes the film seem so much like the Museum of Natural History from the first film that nothing really seems interesting. One of the key guidelines of a sequel's success is making people want to go out and see it instead of just putting the original in to watch over, and Levy falls down on the job here. He makes the Smithsonian a bigger experience as it should be, but it's not different…just dumbed down. Levy has never been a fantastic director—his other big screen directing credits include the terrible Pink Panther remake, the Cheaper by the Dozen remake and the Ashton Kutcher/Brittany Murphy rom-bomb Just Married—but here he seems to be at his laziest, knowing the movie was going to make money based on the success of the first one. It's an all-around failure on Levy's part as a director and one he should hardly trumpet on his resume.
What almost saves this film—almost—is Amy Adams. Adams has grown to be one of the best young actresses working in Hollywood right now, with two well-deserved Oscar nominations to her credit and a host of good performances. As Earhart she adds more zest to the movie than any of the special effects or most of the other leads combined. She lifts all of the scenes she's in with Stiller, combining a knowing grin, a superb grasp of the appropriate era's language and a nice touch of moxie. Stiller seems to pick up his game when he's paired off with her; at other times, he looks more bored than inspired. Hank Azaria is having a lot of fun as Kahmunrah, but he wields a lisp that makes some of his more ridiculous accent work in other movies seem subtle by comparison. He breathes life into his part of the film at times, and other times just irritates. The rest of the cast is mostly solid, doing what they can to lift the lifeless or pointless characters they are embodying.
Film Rating: 5.0
The Video
Fox's video transfer for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen ratio enhanced for 16:9 televisions, works quite well for the most part. The colors are vivid and strong, with blacks coming through solidly and nothing looking faded or washed out. The image is clean of defects and the images are sharp—occasionally a bit too much, as edge enhancement shows in a couple of scenes. The distraction is minor though and there's no evidence of halos or other digital artifacts, resulting in a clean print that allows the special effects to come forth nicely.
Video Rating: 8.0
The Audio
The audio track for the film is given the industry standard 5.1 Dolby Digital treatment, with French and Spanish tracks available in Dolby 2.0 Surround sound. The track is robust, clear and quite discernable, although those with a full surround set-up may notice the lack of attention paid to the individual channels. The majority of the focus is on the center channel, with some movement out to the side during key moments where the music or sound effects swell. Overall the track is quite serviceable and easy to listen to, though one might have expected a stronger overall track from an effects-driven film.
Audio Rating: 7.5
The Packaging
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and its companion DVD Monkey Mischief are presented as a two-DVD set titled by the packaging a "holiday gift set." There is a case for each disc, featuring the stars on the main movie and the monkeys on the second. The DVD's are your standard grey with silver lettering, and the menus feature still frames with music from the film playing; the menus are easy to navigate.
Packaging Rating: 6.5
Special Features
Commentary by Director Shawn Levy: Levy talks alone on this first commentary track, and the most apparent thing here is that he clearly could have used someone else to talk with. He comes across as rather dull on his own. Levy talks at length about the origin of the film and the uncredited writers who came on board to polish the script. Levy seems to think he's stuck in a promotional piece here as he takes the whole thing way too seriously and uses buzz words like "magic" way too often. Of the two commentaries, this is easily the one to skip as it doesn't break a lot of ground that the featurettes didn't cover and Levy is a poor choice to host a commentary all his own.
Commentary by Writers Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon: Definitely the better of the two tracks, this has Garant and Lennon talking in a light-hearted, bantery manner about the film. It is also much more informative about the little tidbits fans of commentaries love to hear; at one point, the two lament about how they wanted the cherubs to be more mafia-style caricatures. The two men were co-writers on Reno 911 and their knowledge of each other and friendly dynamic works well and keeps this track moving along. Since neither man spoke on any of the other features, there's not as much duplication of information and this is clearly the track to listen to.
The Curators of Comedy: Behind-The-Scenes of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: (19:56) This behind-the-scenes featurettes starts off with Levy talking (ironically) about the pitfalls of making a sequel in that it becomes bigger but not better, and that he and Stiller decided to hold out until they got a story that could do that. Amy Adams, Robin Williams, Bill Hader, Azaria and others talk about signing on and their reactions to the script. Stiller talks about filming in the Air and Space Museum and chats with Levy about how they needed to get Congressional approval to shoot the Smithsonian. The second portion deals primarily with the cast, with some references to how the ad-libbing worked in the first film and how Levy cast the second movie with a mind toward improvisationists. Azaria and Stiller talk about their history of working together on films and their camaraderie before they put some focus on Adams. The actress talks about how she liked Earhart's character in the film and how much she wanted to play that out. A brief funny bit has Levy and Stiller joking about how human/wax relations hasn't been studied since Mannequin. There's a lot of congratulatory talk here, which is to be expected in what's largely a promotional piece, but it does mix enough off-camera information to keep it interesting. We learn some about Alain Chabat and Jon Bernthal who play Napoleon and Capone, respectively before we learn that the big challenge was making Stiller laugh during takes. After that portion is the focus on Levy as a director. This seems like the biggest fluff portion of the featurette, as there's little information given but a lot of generic praise heaped on him. They talk about the sets and production design which is interesting and provides some solid information about the set design and includes a tour of the set by production designer Claude Paré and a discussion of recreating the artifacts. The last portion focuses on the magic of shooting some of the scenes and how much the actors enjoyed them. As said before, there is a lot of promotional puff but the information offered makes it worth it for those who want to know more about the movie.
Deleted Scenes: (11:29) There are five deleted scenes here in all, which include commentary from Levy regarding them. The first is entitled "Brunden: The Director's Cut" and has Levy talked about how Hill and Stiller turned a page in a half of dialogue into a twenty-page sequence. Obviously, this was cut for time length as it should have been. For people who like Stiller and Hill's style of humor this will be funny; for those who don't, it will just be longer. The second piece involves the villains divvying up the world via Twister which is as silly as it sounds and, unsurprisingly, didn't test well in screenings. There's a bit of all the villains cramming into an elevator while searching for Amelia and Larry which provides an amusing visual but is the kind of scene we've seen before; next is the scene involving the Moon Rover where Amelia provides some advice to Larry which is actually pretty good, but Levy says was cut in order to cut the drama and keep the focus on the ticking deadline for Jedidiah. The next scene features something that happens in the trailer but was cut from the film where Capone tries to act in slow-motion like he's seen in gangster movies, which makes him look like a buffoon. The actor's performance is solid enough to make it moderately funny. There's one last scene which brings in a last scene involving the guards from the first film, which is actually pretty good but apparently didn't work within the finished product in Levy's estimation.
Gag Reel: (8:11) This gag reel is about eight minutes of the usual flubbed lines, cracking up and such. There's some fun ad-libbing from Ricky Gervais, Stiller, Hill and others, and some clowning around by the whole of the cast to break up the monotony of random laughter; as gag reels go, it isn't at all bad.
Phinding Pharaoh: (4:50) This featurette talks about Azaria's performance as Kahmunrah, focusing on his voice work. Levy and Azaria talk about how the script described Kahmunrah as having the British accent to it but without the fey qualities, and we see some shots of test footage involving that…which works, frankly, far better than what they went with. The two go into how they tried a host of different voices and we see the test footage of Southern and Cockney accent takes (each changing where Kahmunrah was being shown). They finally show us the accent shown in the film and why they went with it, calling it Karloff-esque. Levy's explanation of going with this is "When you have a guy like Hank Azaria, why go down the middle?" It's not the most compelling reason, but there you have it.
The Jonas Brothers in Cherub Bootcamp: (3:53) Levy kicks this one off by talking about how the cast had mostly come together when they got to casting the cherubs, which was difficult until he came upon the Jonas Brothers. We then go to an interview with the brothers, who do a little skit about how Shawn is intense…er, creative. This whole thing is intended to be funny, as Levy tries to run them through a "Boot Camp" where they walk around flapping their wings and Levy acts like a tyrannical director. Stiller has an interview bit where he pokes at Levy lightly, and the Jonases try to play things off humorously. It works in flashes with the rest being a bit overdone, but being short it manages to entertain without wearing out its welcome.
Trailers: (4:53) There are several trailers here, consisting of a joint one for some of Fox's "Family Favorite" films on DVD, Aliens in the Attic, the terrible looking straight-to-video Space Chimps 2 that looks to shamelessly rip of Monsters vs. Aliens and the TV show Glee.
The second disc in this two-DVD set is what makes it the "Monkey Mischief" edition.
Monkey Business: (5:04) This is the most behind the scenes-esque short, and has Levy talking about how effective Crystal, the monkey that played Dexter, was. They talk about Dexter's role in the first movie and then spotlight Anthony Suffredini and Tom Gunderson, the monkey trainers and how long they've been working with the monkeys. Levy talks about how they had to make something real and not CGI and how key it was to have someone real for Stiller to work off of. There is a little bit of fluff in this piece but the background on the monkey and what its role was in the film is nice to see, and it doesn't overstay its welcome.
Primate Prima Donnas: (6:28) This short features Suffredini, Gunderson, Gervais, Levy, Stiller and others talking about Crystal and Squirt, the other monkey in the movie. This whole bit is largely played for laughs like the monkeys were real actors and even features a faux interview with Crystal and Squirt. There's actually some serious information in here where they talk about the monkeys and their differences in personalities, their capabilities on-screen and so on. We learn the wide host of films that Crystal's been in, including Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Failure to Launch, American Pie, 3:10 to Yuma, Frasier and Scrubs. Gervais gets to clown around a bit with Crystal on his shoulder and interacting with her, which is moderately amusing. The humor in here generally works and the information is fairly nice.
The Secret Life of a Monkey Movie Star: Life Off-Camera: (6:28) Exactly the same length of the previous featurette, this is purely a humor thing and has Suffredini and Gunderson doing most of the talking. The premise here is how the monkeys are spoiled stars and the trainers are their menservants. There's talk about the monkeys doing tai bo and doing their own stunts. Crystal seems to be the star of the monkeys as she once again has the focus here, down to lunch and drinking by the pool. It's about as silly as it sounds, but the monkeys are game for acting it up nicely and the trainers play it straight which works moderately well as sort of a parody of real movie stars…complete with musical aspirations.
Night of the Museum Monkey Slap Game: As banal as it sounds, this is a flash game which features the images of Dexter and Cecil (Dick Van Dyke) facing off in a cheap dodge and slap game. The controls are easy and the rhythm is quick to obtain, making this a game that will at best entertain once and then be quickly forgotten about. There are two rounds and they are pretty much identical, with wins leading to a JibJab-style celebration from the character you choose.
Abel and Dexter's Flights of Fancy: This has little animations about X, during which you answer questions and earn fuel with which you can fly along. The whole thing is about the physics and history of flight and monkeys, and it's at least a good reading comprehension test as well as something parents can use to teach kids more about the topic while letting them have the fun of "building" their own plane for Dexter to fly.
Special Features Rating: 7.0
The 411: There's a lot to dislike about Night of the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Ben Stiller and director Shawn Levy go for a "bigger is better" feel but don't invest as much heart as they did in the first one, which in turn amplifies the franchise's flaws for the sake of getting a laugh out of the kids. Historical figures are turned into one-note jokes that aren't even smart enough to be relevant to the exhibits they're poking fun at and outside of the marvelous work of Amy Adams, the performances are uninspired and boring. While the special effects are impressive it feels like too much and the whole thing seems like a pointless exercise in cash-grabbing. Despite a decent technical set of transfers and some fun (if often silly) special features, this is a middling DVD release and only recommended as something to keep the children quiet for a couple hours. A trip to an actual museum would be a much better way to spend their time.
