Starring - Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan & Ricky Gervais.
Running Time - 108 minutes
Rated - PG

The film is based on desperate divorcee Larry Daley (Stiller) who is trying to resist losing his sons attention to his stepfather. Larry is also facing financial problems so takes a last gasp job working the night shift as a security guard at the Natural History Museum.

It soon becomes clear after a couple of hours into his new job that this night shift is not like any other. Larry doesn’t exactly watch over the artefacts, but instead ends up trying to keep them all in one place. An ancient Egyptian tablet within the Museum casts a spell that brings all the artefacts to life. These include a skeleton of a T-Rex, a stuffed monkey and even Theodore Roosevelt who is voiced by funny man Robin Williams.

Larry faces numerous problems throughout his night shifts and in time Larry begins to study the history of the events and people in the exhibits to prepare himself better each night.

It has slight bright spots with a cameo from Ricky Gervais as director of the museum; unfortunately this was at the beginning of the film so it was downhill from then on. Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan bring a rare and welcome smile as the mad cowboy and the power hungry roman battling it out for control of the museum even though they’re an inch tall.

Altogether this wasn’t one of Stiller’s finest moments and you’d be better off looking up “Meet The Parents” for a much better performance. The laughs are few and far between and I really lost interest in this film quite quickly. A disappointing film that with such a cast had so much potential, but in the end served up very little.

Best Bit: Larry being given the run around by the museums cheeky monkey.

Rating: 2 out of 5, Lots of special effects, but the funny people just weren’t funny enough.