Eye Candy #214 - "Night at the Museum - Battle for the Smithsonian"

Night at the Museum - Battle for the Smithsonian:  I could take or leave the first “Night” movie.  It was okay, not great, but I truly enjoyed some parts of this sequel.   Ben Stiller is back as Larry Daley, former museum security guard turned an infomerical pitchman/inventor a la Billy Mays.  He finds that the contents of the American Museum of Natural History in New York are being mothballed and sent to the Smithsonian in DC for storage.  Finding this untenable, he breaks into the Smithsonian to get his friends back, things go pear-shaped, and he ends up gallivanting across the entire spectrum of the various Smithsonian facilities, as things that shouldn‘t have come to life inevitably did.  This time around he has some co-stars with serious comedic chops, with Bill Hader as Custer, Christopher Guest as Ivan the Terrible, Hank Azaria as Egyptian baddie Kahmunrah (schticking Boris Karloff; he’s very amusing), and Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart, all vying to steal the various scenes they are.  Stiller’s bosom companion Owen Wilson is here, as is  his Svengali, Steve Coogan.  This film had great energy and wasted no time getting underway and didn’t rely just on physical schtick to get all its laughs (I.e. for those that don’t laugh at monkey slaps, there was something else to laugh at). There are even homages to Apollo 13”, “Last of the Mohicans” and  “300” (which is decidedly not children’s fair).  Woodchuck sez, “Me likey.”