I think Williams makes a much better dramatic actor than a comedian. He was brilliant in One Hour Photo and Awakenings. He was also good in Insomnia and What Dreams May Come. Williams plays an awesome shy but strangely loveable bookworm with a slight case of sociopathic tendencies.
And I think you have nailed it.
He does quite well at his “serious” characters (OK, there was that horrible Patch Adams) but his comedies (live action, not animation) have sunk to new lows - and Doubtfire was about the last of his truly funny comedies.
Nothing, I know. But that doesn’t make it a better movie than it is just because there are worse. I mean, getting bit by a dozen mosquitoes (Museum) isn’t as bad as getting mauled by a bear (Gigli), but that doesn’t make a dozen mosquito bites not that bad.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m sorry, “slapping the monkey” is an absolutely hilarious phrase. Maybe I’m just juvenile. 
I liked it. I was howling at the slapping the monkey part! I’m easily amused, but I went to that movie to be amused - it delivered.
He was escellent in Moscow on the Hudson, which was a very low key comedy/drama. All his other movies from that era are abominable, although Garp has some interesting bits.
Well, IIRC he committed to paying all of Chris & Dana Reeve’s medical bills after their insurance ran out, and I assume he is taking care of education, etc, for their son. He’s a stand-up guy.
Which means that he probably has to take the occasional “paycheck” movie. I do wish he wasn’t taking so many, but…
I agree that Robin Williams does much better as a dramatic than a comedic actor, but can you blame the guy for not wanting to portray deranged killers like he did in One Hour Photo all the time?
Back on topic to Museum…
I enjoyed it. It wasn’t wonderful, I won’t see it twice, and I’ll never rent it after it’s out of theatres, but it was fun. It was cute, and very rarely did I feel like a scene just needed to end
The monkey peeing and Attila crying were too much. Funny for about a second, then just dragging onn and on
but on the whole it was a cute enough family movie.
I like neither Ben Stiller nor Robin Williams, but the movies looks like it could be funny and I am thinking of giving it a try.
I worked at the Museum of Natural History about 20 years ago (as the library secretary, not a guard) and let me tell you, my boss was a lot scarier than dinosaur skeletons or even Robin Williams!
Can I ask you a question? Do you go out, and then back in, paying to see the additional movies? Or just slip into the other theaters?
I knew a doctor who used to brag about how his family always went to see two movies, watching one then going into another theater to see a 2nd for “free”. I always thought that was a bit tacky, to do it all the time and to brag about it.
Except a movie set in a natural history museum should have been scrupulously accurate, at least when it came to the scientific stuff, and weren’t the monkeys (in the Hall of African Mammals) identified as Capuchin monkeys, which are native to the New World?
And I was ambivalent on Robin Williams’ character admitting to being a wax replica of Teddy Roosevelt and not the actual man. Didn’t the other animated museum figures believe they were actually who they were portraying and not replicas of them?
Aside from those two nitpicks, I liked it, as did my brother, sister-in-law and their twelve- and eight-year-old children.
I don’t like many movies, but I really liked this one. I love museums and zoos, and it was just fun to watch how things played out.
To **Dewey Finn’s ** point, isn’t the real question, if you want to pick the nits, whether the stuffed monkeys in the real museum are capuchins? If the real museum is inaccurate, shouldn’t the movie be true to life? Not saying this is necessarily the case.
I have always wanted to do that to Ben also. 
Dewey Finn, I think Williams’s wax character was just more aware than the others, but I don’t really know. I’ve seen so many truly great movies since I saw this one that it’s faded and fading more every day. I still chuckle at the “Who’s evolved?” line when it pops into my head, but I’m not going to talk about this dopey but mildly entertaining movie any more.
We pay, or have passes. We buy lots of discount AMC passes at Costco, and we use our AMC Moviewatcher card (which accumulates points for free popcorn, free drinks, and free tickets). We also see a lot of movies during matinee hours, and take advantage of another local theater’s “$5 Tuesday” where all seats, all shows, are 5 bucks.
I do admit to every once in a while paying for one movie and seeing another, such as paying for City of God (which I’d already seen a couple of times before) but actually going to see The Passion of the Christ (which I didn’t want to support financially but really wanted to see)*.
- Sorry Mel, I’ve paid twice to see Apocalypto, hope that makes up for it a bit. Apocalypto, being my favorite movie of the year, definitely makes up for TPOTC, which I hated.
Did you or did you not see a preview before you saw the movie? Because if you saw a preview, surely you knew what you were in for.
Note to self… do not go see Ben Stiller movies if one expect high critical drama or serious overtones.
That being said, we went, we enjoyed it, although I didn’t laugh out as much as I wanted, I did enjoy the time… unlike the time I went to see “revenge of the sith”, where I actually left the theator angry…
You have to love a movie where charactors get to drive a remote control truck!
That’s why they should have made Night at the Library. Robin could have played a sociopathic rare book curator or something.
I’ve thought more about it and am now thinking of it like Toy Story, where Woody was aware that he was a child’s toy, while Buzz Lightyear thought he really worked for Space Command.
I thought it was mediocre. My girlfriend thought it was hilarious.
What bothered me the most was the shoehorning of subplots from the Generic Hollywood Script Machine.
Carla Gugino I could happily watch for two hours as she snored away with drool running out of her mouth. But her existence in this movie was simply to fulfill the need for “potential romantic interest” and “side-character needing redemption/inspiration”.
Ricky Gervais…can we please let his 15 minutes be over? I acknowledge that many people liked the BBC Office, which I couldn’t stand despite much trying. I owe him for creating the USA Office. Then he makes one of the worst of the modern Simpsons episodes (which is saying quite a lot), and then shows up as a Black Hole of Humor in this one.
-Joe