May
20Ben Stiller’s Art Movie
Cinephiles complain there aren’t any good art movies around. They’re ignoring the most expensive art movie ever made, “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.”Sure, the title may sound klutzy, but consider the following: Here’s a movie in which great paintings come to life. Historic figures utter wise epigrams. And the whole movie takes place in a museum.
Most important, this is a film that displays a truly surreal sensibility in that it has no tenable plot. Not even a basic hook, like the first “Night at the Museum.” Which is all the more surreal, because the sequel must have cost $150 million or thereabouts (I didn’t ask the studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, because, like all studios, it slavishly protects and distorts its numbers).
So while all those critics are in Cannes searching for art, I managed to find it at a screening on the Fox lot this week.
But here’s the important part: There are strokes of magic in the second “Night at the Museum.” Shawn Levy is a fabulously talented director and Ben Stiller has abandoned some of the forced mannerisms of his earlier work. He seems totally at ease in this film and so does Amy Adams who, as Amelia Earhart, does a superb turn as a Katherine Hepburn type.
Also performing excellent bits are Hank Azaria, Robin Williams, Christopher Guest and Ricky Gervais.
I’m not going to ask whether it makes sense to shoot a sequel that has no plot. Let’s just say I admire the Fox production mavens for investing so much in a thoroughly surreal work of art.
Besides, the first go-around grossed $574 million around the world. So chances are the sequel will be the most successful art movie of all time.
OK, maybe not really an art movie.
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