Stiller's Character is Very Familiar but Night at the Museum Still a Good Film

One thing I've come to expect from seeing Ben Stiller is, no matter what the plot, his characters are pretty much the same. Regardless of whether he's playing Greg Focker in Meet the Parents or Reuben Feffer in Along Came Polly, he seems to almost always play a nice guy thrust into an overwhelming situation.

His role in Night at the Museum was no different.

In the movie, Stiller plays Larry Daley, a divorced dad desperate to get his life on track. After failing in a bunch of business schemes that included marketing his invention the Snapper, he takes a job as the night watchman at the Museum of Natural History. On his first night on the job, he learns an Egyptian tablet brought to the museum in the 1950s brings all the displays to life and his main job is to keep them from destroying the museum or escaping. He has an Easter Island head looking for gum, Genghis Khan looking to rip him apart, cavemen trying to set the museum on fire and a monkey that is constantly stealing his keys and releasing wild animals from their display.

In case all that chaos wasn't enough, he has a museum curator (played by Ricky Gervais) looking to fire him for every mistake. He also has to watch over his back for the three watchmen he replaced (played by Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs) since they are interested in stealing the tablet that gave them their youth back and framing him for the theft.

While the movie did remind me a bit of Jumanji, I think there was just the right amount of comedy and drama to make the film workable. I wasn't on the edge of my seat but I didn't want to walk out on it either.

Robin Williams played a very believable Teddy Roosevelt and the feud between Owen Wilson's Jedediah and Steve Coogan's Gaius Octavius was classic, though I have to admit Wilson's character seemed very similar to other roles he's played too. While the ending was a bit predictable, the horse chase through Central Park was definitely exciting to watch.