I saw Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian and The Wrestler this weekend. The Wrestler was a much better film, but I will review both in full, independent from one another
Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian
Night at the Museum was a fun film. I enjoyed it, it was funny, different and had a nice charm to it. Now I never thought there would be a sequel, and I was happy with it. It was a fun movie in itself, but when I heard it had a sequel I was taken aback by the idea. This film NEVER needed a sequel.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let us get on with this review. Night at the Museum 2 was nothing special, it was an okay movie. It had a few laughs and tried to be romantic at times, but it wasn’t great. It fell short of the enjoyable Night at the Museum though, not being as funny and generally being a little lacking.
Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) has became a big success with his inventions and now has his own company, but he isn’t happy with this life. When he finds out that the Museum where he has had such fond memories is being renovated to include more interactive exhibits he does everything he can to save them.The exhibits are moved to the Smithsonian, apparently the largest museum in the world but they bring along the Magical Tablet that brings them to life during the period between twilight and morning.
Larry Daley showing off his Flashlight skills
Kahmunrah is actually the owner of the tablet and needs it for world domination so he sends Larry Daley off on a silly quest to find a combination. The story as you can see is a little silly and doesn’t really mean anything to anyone. Once it becomes day break the whole adventure has been for nought as all the exhibits, become exhibits again and the world is none the wiser.
The fact that none of the story really mattered and I was quite biased towards the film probably hindered its chances of getting a good review from me, but that’s tough.
The film had its comedic moments, Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria) was perhaps my favourite character in the film. Hank did a pretty good job with the Egyptian lisp and was one of the few characters I genuinely found funny. Hank Azaria also voiced Abraham Lincoln and The Thinking Man. Larry has a love affair during his adventure with Amelia Earhart and through this he finds out how he’s supposed to live his life. The message of the story is to do what makes you feel good, not do what gets you the most money.
Basically the movie is mediocre, if you want to see a film that will make you laugh once every ten minutes, go see this. See this if you really liked the first one, as its the same sort of humour with maybe a deeper message.
I apologise if you can feel the resentment for this sequel in this post, it really wasn’t terrible, it was just unnecessary.
★★★★★
Now onto a film I did enjoy:
The Wrestler
Obviously you will know that this film is about Wrestling, and most of you will probably have seen it as it was released a few months back. I just wanted to write a review because I enjoyed it so much.
Randy The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is a wrestler and the film shows the life of a wrestler even one that is getting quite old for his physically challenging career. The Wrestker is filmed like a Documentary or Biopic and it works in this way perfectly. I was engrossed for the whole 100 and something minutes and found the film to be really touching.
Mickey Rourke played The Ram perfectly. The emotional ersponses were spot on and he looked like an old wrestler would. The story is emotional and tugs at your heart strings but when it tugs you got stuck, you are pulled into Randy’s world and it is just perfect. I could feel his pain and sorrow through out the whole affair, and it was just perfect.
Randy has a simple life. He does odd jobs at the Supermarket and wrestles on weekends. Randy’s life is wrestling. Everyone knows him for it and everyone loves him for it. Sadly Randy can’t wrestle forever. Due to an accident of the heart he is told that he can no longer wrestle, and this tears him apart. The film shows Randy’s life, and shows it in such a beautifully paced detail that I was glued to my seat.
I really enjoyed the Wrestler and if you’re a wrestling fan, which I’m not, you will enjoy this fil meven more than I did. The Wrestler shows the way of the wrestler and the life of the wrestler and it was just captivating.
★★★★★
Well those are the two films that I saw this weeked, I just watched Get Smart, which was really good, but a triple review post might be a bit too much, so I’ll save it for later reference.
