Night at the Museum 2 (3 Stars)

There's some confusion about the title of this film. According to the DVD box, its name is "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian". However, in the opening credits the title screen simply calls it "Night at the Museum". There isn't even a number two to distinguish it from the first film.

The film takes place three years after the original film. Larry Daley has left his job as a night guard and gone back to being an inventor. He's now having moderate success with his Glow-In-The-Dark Flashlight. (I'm British, so I prefer to call it a torch). It's a better idea than it sounds. If there's a power cut and you need a torch, you might not be able to find it in the dark. If the torch's outer casing is fluorescent, it's easy to find. I wonder if these torches are on sale yet.

Larry visits the museum and finds that almost all of the exhibits have been packed in boxes. It's been decided that traditional museums are too old-fashioned. The new museum is to be made up of talking holographic displays. Larry stays the night in the museum to say farewell to his old friends. The Tablet of Ahkmenrah is to remain in the museum, so they won't come to life any more in their new resting place, the underground vaults of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C.

The next evening Larry receives a phone call from Jedediah. Dexter stole the Tablet, so now all the exhibits in the Smithsonian Museum have come to life. Kahmunrah, the older brother of Akhmenrah, has attacked and imprisoned the new arrivals from New York. He wants the Tablet, because it has untapped powers that will help him conquer the world. Larry goes to Washington to save them.

I'm sorry to say that this film doesn't live up to the original. Too much is illogical. In the first film the exhibits were at war with one another, but now they're united, even before they have to face a common enemy. In the first film there were constant communication problems, but now they all seem to understand English, even if they don't speak it. We see all the exhibits from the first film, but several of them, including Sacagawea, shown above, only appear in brief cameos. The new exhibits aren't funny, except for their randomness. The only exception is Amelia Earhart, played by Amy Adams.

Amelia Earhart is comical in the way she's portrayed. She's an independent woman, who doesn't need a man to tell her what to do, but she goes to the opposite extreme, taking any man she wants. In this case, any man means Larry. While he's struggling to save the world, he has to fight off Amelia's attempts to kiss him. It's very hard for him, because she looks insanely sexy in her tight fitting flying outfit.

That's still not enough to make it a good film.

Success Rate:  + 0.8

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