Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

Recently my kids and I watched “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian”; we saw how funny it looked on its trailer and wanted to buy it. Immediately after watching it I wanted to do a review and decided on one thing: if a movie that my kids and I watch are good my kids repeat phrases from them all the time, such as “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs“, but they don’t do that in regards to “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian”. I know that isn’t a satisfactory explanation of a movie’s merit, though, so I have some of my own.

Some sequels don’t make very much sense if you haven’t seen the prequel but that was not the case in this movie: I never saw the first movie and I still understood all of this movie so score one for the movie, I liked that. What I wasn’t satisfied with, though, was that the movie was no where as funny as the trailer made it look; oftentimes I want a serious or semi-serious movie but in the instances I want to watch a real comedy I want to be able to say the movie in question was really funny and this movie fell short. The trailers showed all the really “funny” parts of the movie but nothing else was that good; we all know how short a trailer is so the fact that the movie’s trailer could show all the funniest parts of the movie did not, in my mind, say that much for the movie.

I think that since the whole idea of the movie was so far-fetched -how often do exhibits in a museum actually come to life?- meant that the movie should have been a little more crazy but it was too serious. Ben Stiller’s character fell in love with a lady who was really just a wax figure all the other times than the movie showed which was more sad than anything. The Egyptian King showed as so funny in the trailer was more mean and serious and revengeful than anything and that didn’t impress me. Those are just a few instances, the movie was too serious and lacked.

The creators and directors of “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” might have meant for and wanted the movie to be more serious than I assume the prequel might have been and that’s ok and fine. What I disagreed with, though, is that the creators made the trailer -the parts that entice a person to watch the movie- seem much funnier than the movie so I had the idea the movie would be too. If the movie was more serious the trailer should have had an introduction to that: a few funny scenes along with some serious short snippets but the trailer never. I wasn’t satisfied enough with the movie and now that I have it I won’t watch it if I want to laugh myself silly. For the true satirists like myself and the people looking for a lot more humor I don’t recommend this movie. On a scale of 1-10 I’d give it a 5.