Quick Movie Review: Night At The Museum

5/10

I thought since the sequel to this film is number one at the box office right now I'd take a punt at the original since it was on.

Kids films are a little tough on writers and directors; you want thenm to be exciting and occasionally sad in an unthreatening way but you also need to put some slapstick and laughs in too. Far too often the balance is fluffed totally and you either get an over-earnest preachy turn off or even worse a shallow, pies in faces waste of time.

Past masters at this balance are the nice folks at Pixar, but Night at The Museum has enough of everything to remain inoffensively entertaining and a decent message for young kids too - that history can be wonderful, and they'd better get the hell down to their local museum before the nice divorcee loses his job!

Seriously, why are so many families divorced in films now? It used to be just in Spielberg films that every family is broken up and miserable.

Anyway, I'd put this one slightly higher in my estimation than Jumanji since it manages to be as fun as it is action based - Jumanji had a few too many creepy "hunter hunting people" bits for my taste.

I wouldn't say it's going to get any oscars though. Or did it?

A