I went into this film, expecting from the trailer that it would consist primarily of Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) fighting it out with the inhabitants of the Museum of Natural History for two hours, and eventually solving the problem of whatever was bringing them to life (and returning them to a more sedentary existence or lack thereof). Actually, the plot was quite different; Daley’s conflicts with the animated museum beings were basically over at the end of his first night there, and the rest of the movie had to do with his reaching a modus vivendi with them and his cooperation with them in stopping a major heist that would itself have left them unanimated.

Did I get ahead of myself there? Daley starts out as an unsuccessful entrepreneur — unsuccessful in work (he invented the “snapper”, a device which would toggle electrical switches when you snapped your fingers, which was drowned by the “clapper”, since more people can clap their hands than can successfully snap their fingers) and unsuccessful in love (he is divorced from Kim Raver and has a ten-year-old son Nicky [Jake Cherry] who lives with his ex-wife, who wants him to break off contact with the boy until his life becomes more stable). Daley takes a job as a night guard at the museum, replacing three elderly but spry night guards (Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs) who are being involuntarily downsized, and who conveniently forget to mention to Daley that, thanks to an ancient Egyptian gold tablet containing a magical spell, the inhabitants of the museum have been coming alive from dusk to dawn since back in the fifties of the last century. Daley, of course, discovers this for himself, starting with the tyrannosaur skeleton (which, however, displays many of the characteristics not of a tyrannosaur but of some other animal with the name Rex or Rover). He survives the night, intends to quit, but eventually comes back to the job, in which he is helped considerably by a wax statue of Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams), who in turn has the hots for a wax statue of Sacajawea (Mizuo Peck). He quickly learns to deal with lions, capuchin monkeys, mammoths, itsy-bitsy Western railway builders (Owen Wilson and friends) and Roman legions (Steve Coogan and friends) and Attila the Hun (Patrick Gallagher). And when his predecessors return to make off with the Egyptian tablet, which is responsible not only for the museum’s animation but their own, he and his new friends — with the help of his son Nicky — must cooperate to prevent the heist.

Any kvetches I had about this film had to be minor; for instance, that the real Sacajawea was married (but perhaps the wax Sacajawea wasn’t; after all, her French fur-trapper husband was not included in the diorama with her and Lewis & Clark). And I notice that I’ve forgotten to mention the growing affinity between Daley and the receptionist Rebecca (Carla Gugino). The main thing was that the film was considerably better than I expected when I went into it.

Enjoy!