Film Review: Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb

From left, Mizuo Peck, Robin Williams, Ben Stiller, Rami Malek and Patrick Gallagher appear in a scene from Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. AP

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb

Director: Shawn Levy

Starring: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Ben Kingsley, Rebel Wilson, Dan Stevens

Three stars

In the final instalment of this comedy action-­adventure series about museum displays with a life of their own, Ben Stiller’s security guard Larry Daley travels to London’s British Museum to repair the magical Egyptian tablet that enables the exhibits to come to life at night.

While the concept isn’t as fascinating as it was when the first movie was released in 2006, it still manages to surprise, thanks to new character Laaa, Larry’s Neanderthal doppelganger, played with amusing physicality by Stiller himself.

The film’s best sequence, however, takes place inside a lithograph by the famed Dutch artist M C Escher. The scene, which apparently took five months to plan, features the year’s most dazzling chase sequence, with the characters racing through an impossible world of multiple planes and levels of gravity.

Like its predecessors, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb has a resolution so sudden it is vexing, but we're sure the kids won't mind. You won't either, if you buy your ticket aware that this is nothing but delightful ­family fare, a fuzzy and fitting farewell to the ­franchise.