Night at the Museum was a mammoth hit in theatres in December 2006, ruling the box office for three weeks, taking in almost $200,000,000 in the process. Starring Ben Stiller as an unemployed man who takes a job as a night watchman at a natural history museum only to discover that the displays come alive when the sun goes down, the movie mixed Jumanji with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the usual Stiller shtick. Remarkable it was not, but no chance to make wheel barrels of cash ever goes unanswered in Hollywood, so this weekend Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, a bigger, louder riff on the first film, opens at a theatre near you.
As the movie begins the Museum of Natural History has been closed for renovations with many of its older exhibits being sent to deep storage in the federal archives under the Smithsonian in Washington. When Larry Daley (Ben Stiller), the former heroic Natural History night watchman, now a workaholic inventor and infomercial star (he’s the Sham Wow guy without the hooker scandal), returns to find out that his beloved “shabby stuffed monkeys and ratty displays” are being discarded in favor of high-tech interactive exhibits he vows to do something about it. Breaking into the Smithsonian’s storage area he clashes with the evil Pharaoh Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria), and his band of despicable henchmen (Al Capone and Ivan the Terrible) who plan on using a golden tablet to awaken an ancient army and take over the world. Enlisting aviatrix Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) to maintain order, Larry tries to unravel the mystery of the tablet before it is too late.
Night at the Museum redux is a carbon copy of its successful predecessor. The location has changed, but little else is different. The screenwriters couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a new style villain, so we have another Pharaoh, this time the comically evil brother of the first movies’ Ahkmenrah.
Luckily for us, though, the wicked sibling is played with verve and a great Boris Karloff accent, by Hank Azaria, who is one of the high points in these otherwise very familiar proceedings. He gives the weak script—it’s more a premise than a story—some life, hamming it up and earning most of the film’s laughs.
Other than that there’s plenty of kid friendly slapstick and computer generated thrills, but no amount of CGI could make up for the lack of spark between leads Ben Stiller and Amy Adams.
He’s in family friendly mode here—all the usual square-peg-in-a-round-hole edge that informs his best work is gone—and she is simply doing a sassy dame impression, à la Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey. Together they romp through the museum, jumping in and out of classic photographs and battling the great warriors of history, but it all feels a bit been there, done that.
Night at the Museum was a mammoth hit at the theatres this past December. It ruled the box office for three weeks and took in almost $200,000,000. Not bad for a movie that co-stars Andy Rooney and Dick Van Dyke, two actors more suited to the dinner theatre circuit than blockbuster movies.
Starring Ben Stiller as an unemployed man who takes a job as a night watchman at a natural history museum, the movie mixes Jumanji with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the usual Stiller shtick. Alone in the cavernous building at night, with only the handwritten instructions left by the old watchmen (Rooney and Van Dyke, along with Bill Cobbs), he discovers the true meaning of the old phrase, “They only come out at night.” He is flabbergasted to learn that once the sun goes down and the museum closes, the exhibits come to life. Giant dinosaur skeletons roam the foyer, wax statues walk and talk, and a reanimated stuffed monkey tears up his precious instruction sheet, leaving him to deal with the nightly chaos on his own. Like Bill and Ted he is assisted by some figures from the past, in particular a wax statue of Teddy Roosevelt (Jumanji star Robin Williams) who spouts sage advice.
Night at the Museum has some amazing computer generated imagery, a few good gags, but fails to really set the imagination loose. Instead of concentrating on the story—the source material, a book by the same name by Milan Trenc, is only 32 pages long—director Shawn Levy fills the screen with pandemonium hoping that flashy computer tricks will mask the holes in the story.
Stiller does what Stiller does—slapstick with an amiable edge, but like they say, “You should never act with animals or kids.” In this case Stiller might want to add “Giant reanimated dinosaur bones” to that list. There’s too much going on and Stiller, along with the story gets lost in the mix.
Night at the Museum is a fanciful story that, in execution, isn’t as interesting as the idea.
Eddie Murphy’s journey from edgy comedian to beloved family entertainer has been rough trip. Kiddie comedies and daddy roles sidelined him for much of the last twenty years, and for every highpoint, like the Donkey character in “Shrek” there is a “Norbit.” For every “Dreamgirls,” there’s a “Haunted Mansion” or “Imagine That.” It’s been tough to be an Eddie Murphy fan, watching his trademarked acerbic comedy dulled by fat suits. Anyway, his transformation was never entirely convincing because Murphy always had too much edge to be Bill Cosby or even Steve Martin.
“Tower Heist,” his new film with Ben Stiller and an all-star ensemble cast, sees him turning to the style that made him famous in movies like “48 Hours” and “Beverly Hills Cop.” Question is, will audiences still care?
Directed by “Rush Hour’s” Brett Ratner, the movie has a ripped-from-the-headlines story. Allan Alda is Arthur Shaw, a Bernie Madoff character whose Ponzi scheme defrauded his clients out of millions of dollars. Among those burned by his scam were the employees of his luxury high rise. Having lost their pension plan the building’s manager Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) concocts a plan to break into Shaw’s apartment and steal his personal $20 million stash. When his posse of employees—Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Michael Pena and Gabourey Sidibe—prove to be less than criminally adept Kovacs brings in an old friend and ex-con, Slide (Murphy) to run the operation.
It’s nice to see Eddie Murphy in a movie that allows him to drop his beloved family entertainer guise and bring back some of the bravado that we loved in movies like 48 Hours. It’s just too bad the movie feels like it was made thirty years ago. Despite its Bernie Madoff storyline it feels old fashioned.
For the most part it’s rescued by the chemistry of the cast who bring some much needed fun to this preposterous story.
Of the ensemble Michael Pena and Gabourey Sidibe are the standouts. Pena has great comic timing and perpetual dazed look on his face and Sidibe shows that she can do something other than the ennui of “Precious.”
Also interesting is watching Ben Stiller as the straight man to Murphy’s wisecracks. The movie definitely picks up when Murphy is on screen. Loved hearing Murphyisms like, “I will blow your face clean off your face!”
Despite the cast, however, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the actual robbery, despite a few twists here and there was completely unbelievable. I don’t mind suspending part of my disbelief but the sheer lunacy of the crime took me out of the movie.
In 2001 Ben Stiller sent up the fashion industry in a movie called Zoolander about moronic models. In his new film, Tropic Thunder, which he co-wrote, directs and stars in, he goes for something a little closer to home—his fellow SAG members.
Tropic Thunder, with its cigar smoking children drug lords, liberal use of the word “retard” and Robert Downy Jr’s blackface performance may be the most politically incorrect—and funniest—movie of the summer.
It’s the story of “the most expensive war movie NEVER made” featuring three pampered Hollywood superstars. There’s action star Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) the kind of dim bulb who describes the movies he stars in as “effects-driven-event-films”; Oscar magnet Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), a method actor (possibly based on Russell Crowe) who spouts nonsense like “I don’t read the script! The script reads me!” and comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a drug addled star best known for flatulence jokes. Two newcomers round out the fictional movie’s cast: multi-platinum hip-hop-star-turned-actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel).
The five are stranded in a Southeast Asian jungle by a director (Steve Coogan) determined to get realistic performances from his spoiled cast. Things get a little too realistic when the actors are targeted by a drug cartel that holds one of them for ransom. To get out of the jungle alive they have to come together and become more like the soldiers they are portraying.
For once you’ll want to arrive at the theatre in time to check out the trailers. Director Stiller introduces each character with a mock trailer from their most recent movie. These fake promos establish the movie’s silly tone starting with Stiller’s over-the-top Stallone-esque Scorcher clip, followed by the Eddie Murphyish The Fatties, where Jack Black plays multiple characters and a surprise cameo in the Downey Jr trailer promises that Tropic Thunder will take no prisoners in its ridicule of Tinsel Town.
After the trailers Stiller jumps right into the action. He opens the main story with a set piece from the fictional film so violently crazy it makes Jerry Bruckheimer look subtle. Blending in every cliché from every Chuck Norris war movie ever made Stiller shows how his pampered cast has gotten the film “one month behind schedule after only five days of shooting.” As the fictional story begins to echo the real life trials and tribulations of the legendary Apocalypse Now shoot, the lampooning of Hollywood broadens to include a grocery list of show business excesses. The movie business is so ripe for parody it’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often.
Stiller aims his jaundiced eye at everyone in front of and behind the camera. From actors, portrayed as needy, coddled masses of insecurity to managers more obsessed with a contract rider that promises their client TiVo than the safety of the actor, no one is safe.
Stiller and Black (who brings notes of John Belushi and Chris Farley to the role) hand in good, solidly entertaining comedic performances, but it is Robert Downey Jr who steals the show. As Kirk Lazarus, an extreme method actor who changed his skin color to play an African American soldier, he creates a portrait of an artiste who is just an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the people he plays. It’s as effective a comment on earnest actors who take themselves a bit too seriously as it is hilarious. Highlights of Downey’s performance include a completely offensive, but screamingly funny breakdown of Speedman’s role in a movie called Simple Jack.
Tropic Thunder is an effective parody of Hollywood made by insiders—including Tom Cruise in a cameo that proves he may have a sense of humor after all—who understand how truly silly and confounding celebrity culture has become.
This weekend a movie called The Watch is opening in theatres. The Ben Stiller comedy was originally called Neighborhood Watch but the February, 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch coordinator in Florida led to the change.
In a statement, 20th Century Fox said, “As the subject matter of this alien invasion comedy bears no relation whatsoever to the recent tragic events in Florida, the studio altered the title to avoid any accidental or unintended misimpression that it might.”
The sad incident that prompted the name change was unusual, but title tweaking is commonplace in Hollywood.
Sometimes moniker modification happens for practical reasons.
In the early stages of development, American Pie was known as Teenage Sex Comedy That Can Be Made For Under $10 Million That Your Reader Will Love But The Executive Will Hate. That unwieldy name got the attention of Universal Studios who changed it to East Great Falls High and then Comfort Food before settling on American Pie.
The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night was also considered too long a name and changed to Saturday Night Fever, lifted from the Bee Gees song Night Fever.
A Roy Orbison song triggered the title of one of Julia Roberts’s most famous movies.
Pretty Women went into production under the name 3,000, the amount Julia’s working girl was paid for the night, but research showed audiences thought it sounded like the title of a sci-fi flick. Director Garry Marshal settled on the Oribson classic after listening to dozens of hit songs for inspiration.
Occasionally titles are changed to avoid confusion with other projects. Goodfellas was called Wiseguy but changed so as not be mistaken for the Ken Wahl television series. The Real World was the working title for Reality Bites, but was altered when MTV began airing a reality show of the same name.
One of the most famous James Bond titles was improved by a typo.
The story of a villain who creates the next day’s headlines and then causes them to come true was called Tomorrow Never Lies, but when a marketing executive mistakenly typed Tomorrow Never Dies in a memo the mistake was deemed more catchy and commercial.
Finally, would you see a movie called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Marketers didn’t think so and called it Blade Runner instead.
How about The Last First Kiss? That one became the Will Smith movie Hitch.
SYNOPSIS: Allan Alda is Arthur Shaw, a Bernie Madoff character whose Ponzi scheme defrauded his clients out of millions of dollars. Among those burned were the employees of his luxury high rise. Having lost his pension plan, the building’s manager Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) concocts a plan to break into Shaw’s apartment and steal his $20 million stash. When his posse of employees prove to be less than criminally adept, Kovacs brings in an old friend and ex-con, Slide (Eddie Murphy), to help.
Ratings:
Richard: **1⁄2
Mark: ***
Richard: Mark, it’s nice to see Eddie Murphy in a movie that allows him to drop his beloved family entertainer guise and bring back some of the bravado that we loved in movies like 48 Hours. It’s just too bad the movie feels like it was made 30 years ago. Despite its Bernie Madoff storyline it feels old-fashioned.
Mark: Of course it feels old-fashioned. It’s an Eddie Murphy movie circa 1990. If not for the hairstyles, you could almost believe it was an unreleased film from that era finally freed from some legal limbo. But you have to admit, it’s great to see Murphy doing the kind of work he should have been doing over the last two decades. So, sure the plot feels hackneyed. But it’s the fine ensemble cast that makes this thing click. My favourite? Matthew Broderick. Yours, Richard?
RC: For me it was Michael Pena. Great comic timing, perpetual dazed look on his face. He and Murphy were the high points for me. It was interesting, however, to see Ben Stiller as the straight man to Murphy’s wisecracks. Loved hearing Murphyisms like, “I will blow your face clean off your face!”
MB: Well, I haven’t liked Stiller in anything for quite a while, and I appreciated his comic restraint here, penance perhaps for all his shameless mugging in those Night at The Museum movies. I will admit the whole enterprise does have a retro vibe, including Tea Leoni and Alan Alda in key roles, but Gabourey Sidibe freshens up the cast in a comic turn a million light years from what she did in Precious.
RC: She is a pleasant surprise. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the actual robbery, despite a few twists here and there, was completely unbelievable. I don’t mind suspending part of my disbelief but the sheer lunacy of the crime took me out of the movie.
MB: I went with it because it was fun, if not credible. But I must say I enjoy the irony of any film that critiques the class system in America starring actors each worth half a billion dollars.
When people talk about chemistry in movies most often they refer to the sexual sparks that fly — or not — between the leading man and woman, but it’s just as important between actors who aren’t necessarily going to fall into bed clinched in a mad embrace.
That connection — as elusive and indefinable as it may be — is just as important to comic actors as jokes or pratfalls. Laurel and Hardy had it. So did Abbot and Costello. And so do Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, who team up for a third time in this weekend’s Dinner for Schmucks. Here are some other droll duos:
Matthau and Lemmon
Jack Lemmon called Walter Matthau the “best actor I’ve ever worked with.” Playing off the differences in their personalities and appearances they made nine films together, some classic — The Odd Couple — some not — Grumpier Old Men — but whatever the movie, they had an ease about them that couldn’t be faked.
Stiller and Wilson
In the early aughts it seemed like you couldn’t have one without the other. Described as “the yin and yang of Hollywood A-listers” Ben Stiller — dark and edgy — and Owen Wilson — laconic and expressive — made four films together in four years — Meet the Parents, Zoolander, Starsky & Hutch and the Royal Tenenbaums — and say that even if the film work dried up they would still find a way to work together.
Pryor and Wilder
Roger Ebert said Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder “make a good team, Wilder with what he calls his ‘low-key high energy,’ Pryor with his apparent ability to con anybody out of anything.” The pair was magic on screen but apparently didn’t always see eye to eye off screen.
Night at the Museum was a mammoth hit in theatres in December 2006, ruling the box office for three weeks, taking in almost $200,000,000 in the process. Starring Ben Stiller as an unemployed man who takes a job as a night watchman at a natural history museum only to discover that the displays come alive when the sun goes down, the movie mixed Jumanji with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the usual Stiller shtick. Remarkable it was not, but no chance to make wheel barrels of cash ever goes unanswered in Hollywood, so this weekend Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, a bigger, louder riff on the first film, opens at a theatre near you.
