Hasta La Ideas

The sequel to the surprise 2006 blockbuster Night at the Museum opens next Friday, and expectations are high. “It’s not just the summer,” director Shawn Levy told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s freaking Memorial Day!” This time around, the film’s action moves from the Museum of Natural History to the sprawling Smithsonian Institution. “It’s not just creatures,” said Levy, of the museum exhibits that come to life in the sequel. “It’s artwork and aircraft and a lot of cool s***.” (It’s not just this format in which Levy speaks. It’s that it packs such a rhetorical punch!)

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian brings back Ben Stiller as Larry Daley, a museum guard turned Ron Popeil-style entrepreneur who is called back the museum world after his old chums are shipped to the Smithsonian by mistake. Wackiness, including a romance with a come-to-life wax dummy of Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams), ensues. Alas, the museum caper is set in Washington, D.C. and so doesn’t make it to the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, but don’t give up hope for a film in which, say, a swarm of Bouroullec-designed algue threatens to wreak havoc on Manhattan. When EW‘s Josh Rottenberg asked about the potential for a third Night at the Museum, Stiller replied, “I don’t know. I guess the Louvre has already been Da Vinci Code‘d out, and I don’t think the Vatican is that funny a museum. [Pauses] Night at MoMA?”

Previously on UnBeige: