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Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian Our rating: Your rating:   MPAA rating: PG (for mild action and brief language) Genre: Comedy, Family Theater release: May 22, 2009 Directed by: Shawn Levy Runtime: 1 hour 45 minutes Cast: Ben Stiller (Larry Daley), Amy Adams (Amelia Earhart), Owen Wilson (Jedediah), Hank Azaria (Kahmunrah) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

The best set piece in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is probably Larry Daley's wild flight through the National Air and Space Museum riding the original Wright Flyer with an animated waxwork Amelia Earhart.

At least, it's the one time in the film—in either film, really—that I felt a connection to Larry. If I ever met him now, I would say, "Dude. Speaking of crazy goings-on in the Air and Space Museum, let me tell you about the time my wife and kids and I climbed out of their elevator escape hatch and up the shaft after being trapped between floors for two-thirds of an hour. Me with a baby on my back, too." We would totally bond.

After that, we would have less to talk about, at least as regards his new adventure. In the original Night at the Museum, Larry was a night watchman whose life certainly got weird when he went to work at Manhattan's Museum of Natural History, but he himself was more concerned about his life outside the museum: his desire for his son's respect, his awkward relationship with his ex-wife and her new man, his entrepreneurial aspirations.

Ben Stiller as Larry Daley, Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart

Even inside the museum, the action was driven, not by the animated exhibits, but by a trio of human conspirators. The plot was driven by human beings, even if the appeal of the movie was the special-effects eye candy. You might say the magical museum exhibits were a sort of reverse MacGuffin—it's what the audience cares about, but it isn't the characters' main focus.

This time out, though, the exhibits have taken over in more ways than one. Larry's family ties are strictly on the back burner; the movie is bookended with brief appearances by his son Nicky (Jake Cherry), but Nicky doesn't really figure into the plot or Larry's motives. Nor do any other human beings.

Larry's entrepreneurial ambitions, on the other hand, matter a great deal. Battle for the Smithsonian reveals that Larry's fortunes have changed dramatically—he's now the founder and president of his own company, Daley Devices, where he markets his inventions (the glow-in-the-dark flashlight!) on cable infomercials with name guest stars and cheering studio audiences. He's even landed a meeting with Walmart. So why isn't he more excited? "Save the celebration until we land the account" is his answer.

Hank Azaria as Egyptian pharaoh Kahmunrah

You may be thinking: Here is a disciplined, focused businessman. The movie's diagnosis, though, is different. "What I see in front of me," declares Earhart (Amy Adams), "is a man who's lost his moxie." Later, one of his old friends from the Natural History museum confides that Larry in his business suit was "all gussied up but dead inside."

Over and over the movie drives home one conclusion: Larry was born to wear the uniform of a museum night guard. The inventions, the managerial decisions, the corny televised banter with cameo-role celebrities … that's not the real Larry. The real Larry, much like an artifact in an Indiana Jones movie, belongs in a museum.

Really? I can understand his old friends at the National History museum being sad (or even, in the case of Owen Wilson's cowboy Jedediah, bitter and self-pitying) that Larry has left them. But wouldn't we all, in our better moments, be glad to see a friend at work go on to bigger and better things?

Am I thinking too much about a movie that is, in the end, about an evil plot by a waxwork likeness of the fictional Egyptian pharaoh Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria) to recruit likenesses of Napoleon Bonaparte (Alain Chabat), Ivan the Terrible (Christopher Guest), and Al Capone (Jon Bernthal) in a bid to take over the world by releasing an army of spirits from the netherworld, all while a giant rubber octopus roams the halls, a trio of Renaissance cherubs flits around crooning top-40 love songs (why?), and the two-inch Roman General Octavius (Steve Coogan) returns to ride into battle on the back of a White House lawn squirrel?

Ivan the Terrible , Al Capone , and Napoleon Bonaparte

Fine. Maybe it's for the best that the museum goings-on have crowded out Larry's personal life, which made the original NATM more human but also more problematic. Along with The Santa Clause and Zathura, the NATM movies typify a thorny subgenre of family film—the broken family film—that often rubs me the wrong way. Not that every movie family must be happy and intact. But I prefer those broken family films, like The Spiderwick Chronicles and E.T., that feel the breakup of a marriage and the repairing of parents with a sense of grief and even fury to those like the original NATMin which they are just facts of life to be gotten over and accepted.

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