Is Night At The Museum: Secret of the Tomb Any Good?

One Last Night

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb - A quick film review by Nathan Brooks

What you find with many film series at the moment is that, overtime, they get considerably worse. Night at the Museum is one of very few series that has managed to keep it's consistent quality, although admittedly it's never been an oscar contender to begin with. Ultimately, the Night at the Museum films have always been good for one thing; a fun time. Your life will not be changed, but you will find yourself leaving the cinema room smiling a little. But does the third one continue this tradition, or is it much worse (or better) than the previous two?

What I Liked

Going in, my expectations were pretty low. I'd recently seen another third film in a family comedy series and it was absolutely awful and at that time it was the worst film of 2014 (that was before I'd seen TMNT). Any guesses? Yep, it was Nativity 3. Oh dear. Fortunately, Night at the Museum 3 is just as good as the previous two. 

M. C. Esher's Relativity

Night At The Museum's
Relativity

I was surprised to find that the majority of the jokes were actually quite funny, with only a few duff ones (I'll get to that later). All the performances were pretty good, especially Dan Stevens as Lancelot, playing a sort of Buzz Lightyear like character who thinks he's real, despite the fact he obviously isn't. There were also some particularly standout moments, including an excellent fight scene in M. C. Escher's lithograph Relativity, making full use of the optical illusion aspect of it, as well as a brilliant scene with Hugh Jackman and Alice Eve.

There's also a scene were Robin Williams's character, a waxwork of Theodore Roosevelt, saying goodbye to Ben Stiller's character, which due to the events of the real world, is a very sad moment, although admittedly not really something you can congratulate the film on. However, the ending scenes were still quite well done and wrapped up the series in the best way possible.

The strengths of the Night at the Museum films have always been the fun aspect and fortunately I found myself laughing a lot more than my expectations suggested I would.

What I Disliked

It's very hard to dislike this film, to be honest. I should probably rename it as 'What Wasn't Particularly Good But Didn't Bother Me That Much Anyway'. 

What Wasn't Particularly Good But Didn't Bother Me That Much Anyway

The plot was admittedly quite weak. The point of their quest is to stop the tablet that brings the waxworks to life from decaying and stopping everyone from dying as a result of it. There's not much else to say about it really and pretty much only one thing in the plot changes from that one description. 

The character 'development' between Ben Stiller's character and his son was also very cliché and not particularly interesting. There were also a few duff jokes that were clearly aimed at younger kids, as well as some other jokes directly taken from the first film, but as I've said it's very difficult to let these things bother you in a film like Night at the Museum.

What I Think

Unless you're super grumpy and love to take apart a film piece by piece complaining about every tiny little detail about it, you should be able to at least smile at this film. It is not going to win any awards, it's not going to change anybodies' lives, but it might make you chuckle a bit. Or a lot, if you're like me.

Overall: 7/10