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January 12, 2007 > Arts & Entertainment > Uninspired casting confuses, not amuses in Night at the Museum

Uninspired casting confuses, not amuses in Night at the Museum

By Jackie Ammons | Thresher staff

Night at the Museum should be renamed Nightmare at the Museum. What could have been an all-star, high-quality movie is reduced to a chaotic mess of miscast actors, a rushed plotline and a sorry excuse for comedy.

Larry Daley (Madagascar’s Ben Stiller), a career-hopping father, is out to prove his worth to his son. He decides to do so by becoming the night watchman at New York’s Museum of Natural History and replacing three elderly security guards played by Dick Van Dyke (Curious George), Mickey Rooney (The Thirsting) and Bill Cobbs (The Ultimate Gift). However, once he takes on the position, Daley discovers that the museum characters, including a wax-filled Teddy Roosevelt (Man of the Year’s Robin Williams), a cantankerous cowboy (You, Me and Dupree’s Owen Wilson) and an arrogant Roman soldier (Marie Antoinette’s Steve Coogan), come alive once the sun goes down. Daley’s goal of proving his worth to his son becomes even harder as he endeavors to tame the wild museum characters.

Night at the Museum’s first false move is employing talented actors and placing them in roles that are completely unsuited for them. Casting Van Dyke as a bad guy was director Shawn Levy’s greatest mistake. A man known as the loveable klutz in The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1950s and then as the cheery chimney sweep in 1964’s Mary Poppins only confuses the audience as the grinning double-crosser in Night at the Museum. Similarly, Rooney, the boy-next-door of the 1940s, just doesn’t add up as an iron-knuckle man.

Stiller and Wilson play their parts convincingly. However, Stiller’s stock character could be played by a number of equally talented comedians in Hollywood: He fails to add anything special to the part of the protagonist.

The movie’s plot allows for no pauses. It constantly pushes the story forward, from the dinosaur skeleton trashing the hallways of the Museum to a stagecoach chase through Central Park. Its constant, no-win situation frustrates the audience until the resolution, a strategy reminiscent of Jumanji or Zathura: A Space Adventure.

The humor of Night at the Museum is forced. The lowbrow laughs garnered from Dexter the monkey urinating on Larry and the Neanderthals thinking fire-extinguishing foam tastes like whipped cream are hardly enough to make this film a true comedy.

However, some credit must be given to Night at the Museum. For those boys and girls who pretend their toys come to life or to the tired businessman or woman who fantasizes about a more exciting job, this movie may be a dream come true. And for those who like the star-studded cast, one of the best moments of the film is when Rooney, Van Dyke and Cobbs perform a dance number reminiscent of their days as young actors.

Night at the Museum tastefully intertwines action and suspense without involving blood and gore, allowing the audience an enjoyable action experience combined with an appreciation for national history. Unfortunately, the entertaining history lesson doesn’t make up for the sporadic comedy.

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