night at the museum movie

I just saw the movie. It's pretty good. Here is a litlle write up on it Teachers waste a lot of breath attempting to make history come alive, when all they need do is deploy a team of special-effects wizards and costume designers. In the coyly hilarious "Night at the Museum,'' Tyrannosaurus rex roams the earth once more, Teddy Roosevelt rides anew, Attila the Hun returns to the warpath, Lewis and Clark retrace their famous expedition, and cowboys in a diorama spring to life to win the West again. For all its dazzling computer-generated sequences, "Museum'' wouldn't be nearly the delight it is without the talents of some of the best comedians in the business. The Friars Club is about the only place you'd expect to find Mickey Rooney,, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson and Britain's Steve Coogan and Ricky Gervais together. But each does his shtick in support of star Ben Stiller as divorced dad Larry, who desperately needs to get on someone's payroll or risk losing joint custody of his son. Looks as if Stiller called in some chips to assemble the stellar cast. That's his mom, Anne Meara (of Stiller & Meara), behind a desk at the employment agency where Larry is handed a job lead that turns out to be more than he or anyone except maybe Walt Disney could imagine. When Larry is hired as night watchman at New York's Museum of Natural History, his predecessors (played by Rooney and Bill Cobbs as if they were the Three Stooges, except they turn out to be not so dumb) fail to warn him about the nocturnal wanderings of exhibit figures. Stiller is in super manic mode, his elastic features signaling panic, as Larry chases lions, monkeys and Neanderthals through marble corridors. Director Shawn Levy keeps this CG mayhem under control, although his experience is mostly in live-action movies such as "Cheaper by the Dozen'' and "The Pink Panther.'' To try to maintain order and not rile the museum director (Gervais of the British version of "The Office''), Larry begs the first President Roosevelt (an unusually subdued Williams) for help. It's hard sustaining a conversation, however, with Teddy galloping by on horseback. This part of the movie is sure to have youngsters' eyes popping while providing a mini-history lesson in the process. Sacajawea, the Indian woman who served as Lewis and Clark's guide and interpreter, is here, for instance, but stuck behind glass, forcing Larry to communicate with her through exaggerated sign language. The funniest scenes involve Wilson as the pint-size cowboy Jedidiah, who attempts to wrestle the guard into submission. Just looking at Wilson makes you laugh, so how could Levy miss with a long shot of the actor in miniature? Jedidiah moves on to battle someone his own size, the Roman emperor Octavius (Coogan) from the diorama next door, who keeps getting in the cowpoke's face. Wilson and Coogan ("24 Hour Party People'') seem to improvise their silly dialogue as they go along. The visual effects crew does a great job of establishing perspective when the diminutive twosome team up to stop the bad guys by letting the air out of a tire on their van. Some of the bits are allowed to go on too long, such as Larry's Dr. Phil moment with Attila the Hun, where he tries to explain to the warrior the source of his anger -- something about his dad abandoning him as a baby to run off and pillage. The lovely Carla Gugino, a proven stage as well as screen actress, is wasted as a museum docent writing a thesis on Sacajawea. And the plotline of a divorced father attempting to prove his worth to his child is becoming cliche. Like the institution it portrays, "Night at the Museum'' comes alive after dark. It's a perfect movie to take the kids to. Who knows, it might even inspire them to want to visit an actual museum.