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| Reviewed by: Chris Burton 03 Apr 2007 Night at the Museum
| |  Night at the Museum is one of those holiday family films that pulls in 246 million at the domestic box office. Nothing is a sure bet in Hollywood, but it seems like everything fell into place for this movie. Its not great by any means, but its a family film- not merely a kids movie. The humor is both intelligent and innocent, and both parents and children will have an enjoyable time at the local cinema.
Ben Stiller plays Larry Daley, a freshly hired night watchman at New York's Museum of Natural History. He's taking over for the long serving guard Cecil (Dick Van Dyke, I though he was dead). It seems like a decent gig, until Larry discovers that an ancient curse causes the exhibits to come alive at night. Cecil doesn't seem too worried. He's been dealing with this for years, and simply informs Larry to follow the instructions he's left for him.
The effects are pretty outstanding. The bones of a tyrannosaurus rex come alive. Larry is terrified, but soon realizes that the dinosaur simply wants to play catch. I don't see how the dinosaur could have looked any more realistic, considering that there are still limitations to cgi technology. You can only imagine how things will look ten years from now. Robin Williams is of course here. I'm really tired of him. I'm sorry. His schtick has been old for years and years and years. He plays Teddy Roosevelt, and guess what? He's over the top.
Van Dyke is still hilarious after all these years, and works great with Ben Stiller, who is a very talented comic actor in his own right. We get performances from Mickey Rooney, Owen Wilson, and Ricky Gervais. This is a very entertaining film.
The Blu-ray is presented in 1.85:1 (hell yeah, my favorite ratio!) widescreen and encoded at 1080p. It looks absolutely incredible, and its funny that I was expecting no less. High definition puts your expectations so high that you find yourself deriding transfers with only minimal problems. Anyway, the most noticeable aspects were the overall detail and the three dimensionality of the image. Besides that, we have a great palette of colors we're working with, and they all look damn good. There is no noise on the cgi, and there is pretty much nothing negative to say about this disc. Audio is DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 Surround, and it packs a wallop. The mix is low-key when the mood requires, but really kicks in during the action. Dynamic range is excellent, and dialogue sounds great. Bass is quite heavy, and the immersive sound design truly adds to the three dimensional look of the film. Its quite an experience. |
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Copyright (c) 2007 Rock Star Media Works, Inc. All rights reserved.
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