Skip to main content

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Review

Jurassic Park never needed to be a franchise. As a thriller, Jurassic Park inherently works better the more compact it is, so stretching it into multiple sequels seems rather counterproductive. Of course, I wouldn't mind if these sequels were good. Unfortunately, they are not. The Lost World , the first follow-up, does nothing new for virtually the entire film - only hinting at a distinctive identity in the final act. Jurassic Park 3 was even worse. The characters are so unengaging and the action so toothless you end it feeling like you've stared at an empty void for ninety minutes. Colin Trevorrow's 2015 sequel/reboot Jurassic World slightly reinvigorated the franchise with flashy new visuals, but it also suffered from bland characters and a muddled script. However, against all the odds, I still foolishly had my hopes up for that film’s follow-up Fallen Kingdom . I did have my reasons, to be fair. J.A. Bayona was taking over directorial duties and he's an exce...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hail, Caesar! Review - Genius Behind the Madness

On an entirely surface level, Hail, Caesar! is a really silly film. The sets are bright and colourful, the characters are bombastic and larger than life and the plot is completely insane and all over the place. If you take a closer look, however, it's much more intelligent than it initially comes off as. Yes, the sets are bright, but their attention to detail is so fantastically minute, you're totally convinced that this is the 50's. The fake film sets are also just as convincing and the films themselves could easily pass off as authentic, if it wasn't for the 21st Century actors populating them. They are obviously slightly exaggerated, for the sake of satire, which probably resonates more with those familiar with retro cinema than regular filmgoers. It's also shot brilliantly by cinematographer Roger Deakins (who was recently Oscar nominated for his work on Sicario ), who manages to make the film feel like something that's not only set in the 50's, bu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is Avengers: Age of Ultron Any Good?

Avengers Assemble! Again! Avengers: Age of Ultron - Film Review by Nathan Brooks And they say English Weather's bad. Back in the summer of 2012, a little film came out called Avengers Assemble. It wasn't much. It's only the biggest superhero film of all time and it only made $1.518 billion. Everybody loved it, I loved it and clearly moviegoers did as well.  Due to its massive success, obviously a sequel was going to be made. In this case, that sequel is Avengers: Age of Ultron, but with all the hype it's received, is it actually any good? Story The story in this film is definitely not for first time Marvel viewers, you really need to see most, if not all, of the previous Marvel Cinematic Universe films. It is packed full of references to earlier films and understanding a lot of elements of the story will require you to have seen the others. But is the story any good? I thinks so. The main story centres around the fact that Tony Stark, or Iron Man, has ...
Post a Comment
Read more