Night at the Museum: Battle to Not Pay

I had a co-worker recently confess to me that he and his wife knowingly attended Hannah Montana: The Movie. This gentleman is well past his prime (Matthew knows him very well) and I wonder if he and his wife should be attending these types of movies alone in a public theater. I have to admit that I posed the same question to myself before deciding to attend Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. There were several reasons I could justify attending the film in a public theater, the first reason being that my wife and I snuck into the movie after attending an earlier movie for which we paid a reduced rate (Thanks, Entertainment Book!) and ate free popcorn (Thanks, Dominoes coupon!). Another good reason to attend this movie is because it is written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon of Reno 911 fame.

As you may remember, the first film in the Museum series was a big hit and probably increased museum attendance among willing children by around one percent. Although the original film was a children’s movie, filled with a lot of childhood imagination, it played better to an adult audience since I doubt most children would get overly excited about a Q&A session with Teddy Roosevelt or a slide show presentation from Lewis and Clark (and Sacajawea).

You probably also remember that the first film starred Ben Stiller as himself under a different character name. As you know from this blog I have seen a lot of Ben Stiller movies and my opinion of his acting chops has not changed. He is always the exact same character with the same mannerisms and reactions to similar situations. Well, Ben Stiller was also in the second Museum film and he will not be winning an Oscar for his performance. I have a sneaky feeling that Ben Stiller learned his acting skills from a seminar at the airport where the two chapters in the take home binder were “know your lines” and “arrive on time.”

The good news about this Museum installment is that it is pleasantly funny, it moves along quickly and the actors cast around Ben Stiller give good performances. Despite low expectations I really enjoyed this film.

I thought the best part of this film was the performance by Hank Azaria. I am a huge fan of The Simpsons so I already like Hank Azaria and he did not let me down with his funny portrayals of Kahmunrah (evil brother of Ahkmenrah from the first Museum film), Abe Lincoln (voice only) and Rodin’s The Thinker (voice only). The only problem I had with the evil Kahmunrah character was that he seemed to be aware of the other characters. How is that possible?

To further explain that question I should probably reveal some of the plot. The exhibits at the Museum of Natural History are being shipped to the Smithsonian for storage and one of the exhibits steals the tablet of Ahkmenrah which brings everything to life. When the exhibits arrive at the Smithsonian the tablet brings everything to life and mayhem, friendship, and sight gags ensue. So, what that means to me is that the exhibits at the Smithsonian had not previously come to life.

When Kahmunrah comes to life he seems to know about all of the exhibits in the museum and even knows details of the exploits of his fellow bad guys Al Capone, Ivan the Terrible, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Since Kahmunrah is 2000 years old I am fairly certain he would not know anything about Capone, Muhammad Ali or General Custer.

Hank Azaria has most of the funny moments in the film; the bit with Darth Vader (as splashed across all of the previews) is good, there is a funny moment with Oscar the Grouch and the line by The Thinker…”I’m thinking, I’m thinking, I’m thinking” is smartly written.

One other oddity that occurs with the Kahmunrah character is that when he calls up his army from the underworld (the underworld is just behind a door to nowhere exhibit apparently) he gets a small battalion of white guys with bird heads. At first I was OK with this, maybe the food in the underworld is not that prevalent so white guys had to evolve in order to properly enjoy and digest small pebbles and grains. But then I started wondering why would they only evolve in the area of the head? About the time I let that thought go the underworld-bird head-white guys got scared in the climatic final battle sequence by giant concrete Abe Lincoln and retreated back into the underworld.

Now, this posed a problem for me. The bird headed white guy soldiers came from the underworld, basically they came from the land of the un-dead. So, after thousands of years of eating chat and marching in endless formation drills they made it to the land of the living and they got so scared of fighting Abe Lincoln that they decided to go back to the underworld…what? How do you think the conversation went when they got back?

“Hey Parakeet Perry, how did it go up there?”
“Well, we were really excited and we blasted through the door and everything was so bright and the air was so fresh and I could smell apple pie - it was wonderful.”
“So, what happened?”
“Well, we were in formation and we had our swords ready but then this tall guy surprised us and we ran back through the door.”
“Why did you run back through the door? Why didn’t you just hide or wait until he left?”
“Honestly, everything just happened so fast and I saw Blue Jay Bill and Cardinal Chris run through the door and I just followed them.”
“Oh well, we’re glad to have you back safely. You did miss two floggings which will need to be made up and I need you to carry that boulder for the next 500 years.”
“There is no place like home.”

Finally, I have to mention that in my continuing quest to have all of this summer’s movies cross into each other, I was really hoping that Napoleon would make a side trip to a water park in San Dimas or ask Ben Stiller if he knew Bill S. Preston, Esquire or Theodore Logan (“Put them in the Iron Maiden.” “Iron Maiden? Excellent!”).

So, to wrap this one up, let it be told throughout history that even the armies of the underworld don’t want to mess with Honest Abe.

Warren

Transformers: I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

I don’t really feel the need to review the plot lines or story development of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. When the second credit of a movie is “In Association with Hasbro” I think it is fair to assume that you aren’t at a screening of Schindler’s List. While there are a few points I would like to make with regard to the film, in general it was fairly entertaining although way too long.

I don’t think any movie critics have written anything even remotely nice about the second Transformers film. From what I have seen, the reviews have been critical of the human character development, the realism of the story, the confusion of the action sequences and the racial undertones of two of the robots. While these are fair critiques, I think it is also important to remember that this is a fantasy story about robots from outer space based on the look and packaging of toys from the 80’s. I mean, can a paid movie critic really say with a straight face “the plot was unrealistic and over-the-top.”

This Transformers film picks up shortly after the previous film ended. Sam is going to college, Sam’s hot girlfriend is the paint girl at her dad’s chopper store (I too like to paint in Daisy Duke’s while posing seductively), Danny from Las Vegas has been promoted to Major, and the good-guy Transformers (Autobots) are fighting top secret missions against the bad-guy Transformers (Decepticons).

As you can probably guess, the Transformers fight, Sam runs, Danny yells Transformer names exactly as they are printed on the toy packages and pretty much everything is blown up in a spectacular manner. As I mentioned previously, you don’t go to this movie to gain insight into orbital mechanics or military strategy.

I thought one of the most interesting plot aspects of this movie was the character of Alice who is a classmate of Sam’s at college. Alice is a hot chick who comes on to Sam and eventually reveals herself to be a Decepticon with a tail that has a tongue on the end. The only reason I mention this part of the movie is because it has a decidedly Terminator feel to it. On the one hand the Decepticons needed the information from Sam’s mind; on the other hand he simply got the information off the shard on his jacket. Why wouldn’t Alice just kill Sam? And as she had him wrapped up in that metal tail with a tongue on the end, what was her plan to take him somewhere if she was not planning to kill him? Wouldn’t a hot chick with a metal tail carrying around another student raise some suspicions?

Of course, the character of Alice was never seen again in the movie and although it caused relationship friction between Sam and his hot girlfriend, the idea that Transformers can also replicate human cells was never re-visited. In my quest to have every movie this summer cross over, I would have made the character of Alice be an Arnold Schwarzenegger look-a-like and then maybe Sam could have had a class with John Connor. Of course, if Alice was Schwarzenegger than the sexual tension would have been really awkward and the metal tail sneaking out of the underpants scene would have been a head-scratcher.

A good portion of this Transformer movie was set in the Middle East. I am mentioning this because a good portion of the first Transformer movie was also set in the Middle East. In fact, if you look closely the village in this movie looks a lot like the village in the first movie. Both times it was blown to smithereens. Both times there did not appear to be any villagers around. While the battle scenes were exciting and loud and fun, I did notice that for some reason all of our (The United States of America) artillery seems to come with a firecracker attached. If you look at the explosions in this movie, every time a bomb is dropped, a missile is fired or a tank fires off a shell the resulting explosion is topped off with a sparkler. Are we buying all of our artillery from the Koreans now? I can’t imagine that there is a Joint Chiefs memo floating around that states “war getting tired, explosions need more showmanship.”

One advantage of setting a movie in the Middle East is the unnecessary filming of Petra. This is a really cool site in Jordan and always worthy of the big screen but what was the purpose of that scene? I personally think it is just bad business to have secrets of the Universe be hidden behind what is portrayed as dry-wall. With all of the technology of Robots from outer space, they hid the key to the sun-sucking machine behind a layer of drywall in the desert? And if the Autobots are supposed to be wise and smart then why would they secretly hide the key to the machine a mere two miles away?

At any rate, this scene would have been a good time to have Indiana Jones in the background doing the three challenges (Penitent, penitent, only a penitent man shall pass).

Skipping to the end of the film, the Decepticons have this sun-sucking machine that they built but was hidden underneath the Pyramids of Giza. Long story short, the Decepticons get the key to the machine and when they turn it on it starts right up and Megatron (Leader of the Decepticons) announces “we will suck the power from your sun with this machine…as soon as it is ready to fire in about five minutes.” Amazing! Even with extra-terrestrial technology that was created to suck the power of the sun there is still a long period of warming up.

So, as you probably guessed, five minutes is more than enough down time for the Autobots to blow up the machine and save Earth. For me, this immediately begged the question why didn’t they just build this thing on another planet? If the Transformers were on Mercury (which is currently vacant) they could turn on the sun-sucker, let it warm up, have a couple cocktails and harness the power of the sun at their leisure.

Don't worry, the film is fun. Stuff blows up, Megan Fox runs in slow motion, John Turturro is good comic relief and Optimus Prime is still the second coolest baby name I can think of (Money Jackson is still number one).

Warren