Tag: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

[Nigel Tufnel Day] This is Spinal Tap (1984)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, June Chadwick, Tony Hendra, Bruno Kirby

Screenplay: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner

82 mins. Rated R.

 

So, technically Nigel Tufnel Day was November 11th, 2011, but I still celebrate it yearly. Don’t you?

Filmmaker Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner, A Few Good Men, Shock and Awe) has been a fan of the legendary rock band Spinal Tap for many years, and when word of a new concert tour in preparation for their new album release, Smell the Glove, DiBergi had to be a part of it. Formed by childhood pals Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest, Waiting for Guffman, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian) and David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2, TV’s Better Call Saul), Spinal Tap quickly became whole with the additions of Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer, Father Figures, TV’s The Simpsons), Viv Savage, and Mick Shrimpton. Now, DiBergi is getting an inside look at one of the most outlandish and insane rock groups in music history.

This Is Spinal Tap is one of the earliest mockumentaries in history, and it’s also one of the absolute best. Director Rob Reiner put forth the effort to make the band look and feel as realistic as possible, to the point where viewers, and even rock stars (Ozzy Osborne, The Edge), thought the band was real. I thought it myself the first time I’d seen the film, and it took me most of the movie before I started to realize what was going on. Mockumentaries are a lot more common place today thanks to The Office, but back then, nobody really put it together.

Part of what makes the spoof so real is the careful attention to detail and taking real rock events, characters, and details, many of which are a part of legend, and turning them upside down. There are little in-jokes and parodies of many songs and events in the film, so much so that some musicians thought they were being personally called out and made fun of (Aerosmith thought some of the humor in the film was at their expense). The reason this film works is love for the music and the performers that make it.

The best running gag in the film is the replacement of drummers, something many bands have gone through (and something writer J.K. Rowling would use in her Harry Potter novels by constantly replacing the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, a nod to Spinal Tap).

This is Spinal Tap is a classic of its era and also an endlessly re-watchable experience. I myself pop it in on a yearly basis. It’s quotable, laugh-out-loud funny, and a beautiful ode to the rock stars who have influenced, inspired, and above all, entertained fans for decades. It deserves a grade all of its own.

 

11/11

-Kyle A. Goethe

 

 

For more Almighty Goatman,

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[Happy 5th Birthday!] Date Night (2010)

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Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Taraji P. Henson, Common, Mark Wahlberg

Screenplay: Josh Klausner

88 mins. Rated PG-13 for sexual and crude content throughout, language, some violence and a drug reference.

 

Steve Carell (TV’s The Office, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day) and Tina Fey (TV’s Saturday Night Live, This is Where I Leave You) are comedic powerhouses with great chemistry, and in Date Night, from director Shawn Levy (Real Steel, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb), they get the chance to play with it, even with the screenplay’s excessive shortcomings.

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Carell and Fey play the Fosters, Phil and Claire, and they need a new spark of romance in their lives. Their friends are getting divorced from a lack of love and they desperately want a date night to change it all, so when the tables are booked at the new restaurant, they take the table reserved for the absent Tripplehorns and enjoy their night. That is, until a case of mistaken identity leads to a seedy underworld of bad cops, worse mobsters, and a missing flash drive containing some very dangerous content and the Fosters have more on their plates than a missing spark.

Carell and Fey have tremendous chemistry and play so well off of each other, while director Levy controls the camera nicely lobbing back and forth between action and comedy. We also get some great cameo work from Mark Wahlberg (Boogie Nights, The Gambler), James Franco, Mila Kunis, and more.

The biggest issue here is from screenwriter Josh Klausner (Shrek Forever After: The Final Chapter, The 4th Floor) and his disappointing script. It has a nice general outline; there are laughs here and action there, but rarely do the two meet on equal ground (the dual-car car chase is an exception) which doesn’t give the leads much to do to flash their creative abilities.

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The leads perform quite admirable and carry the film much better than most others could, which help make Date Night a worthy view of a film, even if it suffers from pitfalls of a less-than-worthy screenplay.

 

3/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

 

For my review of Shawn Levy’s Night at the Museum, click here.

For my review of Shawn Levy’s Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, click here.

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Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)

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Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson, Hank Azaria, Christopher Guest, Alain Chabat, Robin Williams

Screenplay: Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon

105 mins. Rated PG for mild action and brief language.

I avoided the sequel to Night at the Museum like the plague. I enjoyed the original film but thought to myself that a sequel can only harm that. There couldn’t be any possible way for the sequel to be anything new. Literally, the title says it all. It’s just another night at the museum, right?

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Not exactly.

Sure, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is more of the same, but it takes the original premise and expands immensely on it, providing a little of the repetition, but a lot of new fun that makes it comparable to the original.

Larry Daley (Ben Stiller, Zoolander, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) has taken his inventing career to the next level, creating all manner of As Seen On TV that you see on the endcaps in stores across the nation. He has essentially put his past in the Museum of Natural History behind him, but that changes when he gets a call from Jedediah (Owen Wilson, Midnight in Paris, Inherent Vice) telling him that Dexter the Capuchin Monkey had stolen the Tablet that brings the exhibits to life at night and it has been moved to the Smithsonian Museum where all heck has run loose, and it’s now up to Larry and his cadre of walking talking exhibits including Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams, Good Will Hunting, Dead Poet’s Society) and Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams, Man of Steel, Big Eyes) to take on the evil and now alive again Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria, TV’s The Simpsons, The Smurfs 2) who thinks the Tablet belongs to him.

I loved all the ways that Battle of the Smithsonian expanded the universe created by the first film. From the talking bobbleheaded Einsteins in the gift shop to the paintings that Larry and Amelia get caught up in, this is a well-thought sequel with several new avenues for adventures. It does tread some of the same waters as the original, but does so with enough flair that it’s more forgivable. Director Shawn Levy (Real Steel, This is Where I Leave You) continues to stylishly supply action/comedy at full-tilt and it seems like the new characters like Ivan the Terrible (Christopher Guest, This is Spinal Tap, The Invention of Lying) have great chemistry with our returning players.

As always, the cinematography isn’t anything to sing to the mountaintops, and the film might run on a little too long for its own good, but Levy’s work behind the camera keep the film light-hearted and moving along.

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As far as sequels go, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian could have been better (I’m still a little curious about where Carla Gugino went) but it stands up as a lot of fun that adds some new fun and sends up its predecessor nicely.

3.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Night at the Museum, click here.

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