Unoriginal Bastards

Night at the Museum (Shawn Levy, 2006) - D+

Who wrote this? I really frickin' hate this movie -- it makes no sense, tries to wring laughs out of things that aren't even jokes, and has the most ridiculously abortive romantic subplot ever. Worse, it's directed with zero sense of comic timing, and gags that could potentially have been funny are utterly botched: witness the scene in the employment agency, which has several amusing zingers but is edited so horrendously that the lines just sit there as we stare at Ben Stiller's weirdly inexpressive face. Awful, awful, awful, and it only gets worse once we get to the museum and the movie just starts throwing money at the screen. The worst is the dumbass explanation for why every exhibit comes alive at night: there's this mysterious Egyptian tablet, you see, and it guards this mummy of an ancient pharaoh, but it also gives anyone in the museum eternal youth... Ricky Gervais is solely responsible for the +.