Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb review

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (PG, 98 mins)
Director: Shawn Levy
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Talk about stretching an idea so thin you can start to see through it. The premise of the first Night at the Museum movie eight years ago was that a magical tablet could bring the exhibits of a New York museum to life at night, which was realised through what at the time were fairly nifty computer generated effects.

Ben Stiller was Larry, the night security guard at the museum who got caught up in the middle of the mayhem when dinosaur skeletons and Attila the Hun starting running amok. Now Larry is in charge of putting on a show for dignitaries, who think the animated exhibits are special effects.

Before we get to that there’s a prologue set in 1930s Egypt that gives us a bit of half-hearted background on the tablet, as some Indiana Jones-style tomb raiders disturb it amid the standard warnings of a curse.

For reasons never explained this curse involved absolutely nothing happening for nearly 80 years, but now the tablet is corroding and the exhibits are going screwy. The solution, invented by the film’s writers for no reason other than it would be nice to go to London, is that they must go to the British Museum to try to free the curse.

Or something. Because none of it follows a remotely logical or coherent path, and there’s really very little to it in terms of threat or excitement. The situation is paper-thin, the jokes are lame and the special effects aren’t even particularly special. It looks pretty horrible too, the direction is lacklustre and it seems scaled down from previous instalments.

There’s the need for some uninspired padding involving Larry’s teenage son, and whether he will or won’t go to college. Another exciting subplot to look out for in the fourth film; will Larry do the dishes or leave them until the morning?

Yet for some reason it’s perfectly watchable and affable, mostly thanks to a game cast, and mostly thanks to Dan Stevens. He pops up as Sir Lancelot and has some fun with the action shenanigans while also demonstrating a nice way with comic timing as he fails to understand anything going on around him.

We also get the final acting appearance of Robin Williams, who reprises his role as Theodore Roosevelt. It’s hardly a fitting send off, with he and just about every character other than Larry and Lance given insufficient material to make any impression.

In the end this is unlikely to be remembered as one of the great trilogies. Really it barely passes muster, and in a few years there might not even be many people who remember it was a trilogy at all.

But it rattles along quickly and it’s never dull, which actually counts for something. And if it looks like it’s only scraping a third star by the skin of its teeth, which it is, that’s because it’s Christmas, and it’s because we get to see Dick Van Dyke dance.

Tower Heist review

Tower Heist (12A, 104 mins)
Director: Brett Ratner
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Ben Stiller is the manager of a New York apartment building for the super-rich, keeping the place ticking. When one of the residents (Alan Alda) is arrested in a billion dollar fraud scandal, all the staff find their pensions are gone, so Stiller and a bunch of disgruntled employees hatch a scheme to relieve Alda of the $20m in cash they believe he’s hidden in his home. With no skills between them, and Stiller forced to enlist the help of his jailbird neighbour (Eddie Murphy), it should play like a low-rent Ocean’s Eleven, with all the opportunity for breezy caper antics that should afford, and which ought to be the basis for a few undemanding laughs. In its defence, it's the best thing Murphy has been attached to in years, and his performance has an edge that's been missing since his heyday, meaning that what few chuckles there are come from him. But the rest is flabby, with plot holes that aren’t so much gaping as offensive, and entirely lacking in sparkle or surprises.

Greenberg review

Greenberg (15, 107 mins)
Director: Noah Baumbach

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

If you can cast your mind back to the psychotic boyfriend of Rachel that Ben Stiller played in Friends, his portrayal of the titular Roger Greenberg here might give you some idea of where that guy ended up. Greenberg is an unemployed misanthrope, always seemingly little more than a step away from returning to the mental hospital he recently left, with an affair with the much younger woman (Greta Gerwig) he meets while house-sitting for his brother doing little to lift him. It’s a brave move for Stiller, who has never shied away from unlikeable characters, but rarely played one so dark. Greenberg is Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David without the sunny personality, and watching him interact with others can be painful to behold. It’s all very well giving us an insight into a troubled soul, but it’s just so stifling and mannered, too uncomfortable as a comedy and not meaty enough as drama.