Night At The Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is the sequel to the popular Night At The Museum movie starring Ben Stiller. The movie continues the storyline of the museum pieces coming alive at night. The plot centers around Larry Daley, who gave up his security guard position to become a successful inventor, shilling his products on infomercials. Larry goes back to the Museum of Natural History only to find that the exhibits are being moved to the Smithsonian Institute. When Larry discovers the gold tablet that brings the exhibits to life is inadvertently taken to the Smithsonian Institute, he jumps into action to divert a potential disaster.

Night At The Museum 2 is a reasonably good sequel with some funny moments and great special effects. The script is well written for the slapstick style comedy required for the movie. Part of the storyline of Night At The Museum 2 is already known with exhibits coming to life, so the movie relies on new characters and a new location. The original characters are used sparingly which is too bad since some actors, such as Robin Williams, Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan are underused. The new characters are interesting but so much is going on it would have been better to focus more on the characters development and less on action. Ben Stiller is very good as usual, and Amy Adams gives a charming performance as Amelia Earhart. Hank Azaria as the evil lisping Pharaoh Kahmunrah is very funny, and Bill Hader gives a crazed and funny performance as General George Custer.

Overall the actors give solid performances. The talented Reno 911 actors Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon wrote the screenplay. Script wise I would have liked to see more time taken with the original characters incorporated along with the new characters. A number of very talented comic actors are sorely underused in the movie, which is a shame. All in all this is a fun and enjoyable film that may not be quite the equal to the original film, but still would be a good choice for a family movie night.

2009. Directed by Shawn Levy, written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon. Starring Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Hank Azaria, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, Ed Helms and Ricky Gervais.

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