PRGAAMWA DVD Fight: Night at the Museum vs. Stranger than Fiction

I’ve watched a lot of crap for this column in the past several weeks, and this week I spent way too much time at Hollywood Video looking for some way to pass off Curse of the Golden Flower or The History Boys as genre movies so I could review them. Even I, with my robust powers of rationalization, couldn’t pull that one off. I ended up walking out with Stranger than Fiction and Night at the Museum, which didn’t seem too horrible, considering I almost walked out with Apocalypse and the Beauty Queen.

A third grader told me that Night at the Museum was the best movie he had ever seen in his entire life, and that I should see it as soon as I could. “You won’t be sorry!” he said. When I asked what he liked so much about it, he held his fists over his head and said “Monkeys!”

That’s the key to liking Night at the Museum. You’ve gotta be a third grader or be able to maintain that mindset for 110 minutes. I have a hard time doing that. I can only run around the house clutching a pair of scissors and yelling “Poopy! Booger! Butt!” for so long before my neighbors knock on the door and tell me to cut it out before I wake up their baby. They never let me have any fun.

Poopy.

It’s a simple premise: a clueless, but concerned dad has to grow up and get a job, and winds up working as the night watchman at the New York Museum of Natural History where, due to an ancient Egyptian tablet, all of the museum displays come to life from dusk untill dawn. It’s not a bad movie, it’s just boring for anyone over the age of ten.

The best part of the Night at the Museum is Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan as a couple of warring miniatures. They steal every scene they’re in. The most disturbing thing is knowing that the director, Shawn Levy, will be responsible for bringing The Flash to the movie screen in 2008. He’s capable, but not groundbreaking.

The movie I saw in the ads for Stranger than Fiction was a poor man’s Charlie Kaufman movie with Will Ferrell on the loose. As soon as it started, I realized that this wasn’t the zany comedy that was advertised. That’s a good thing because I expected to hate the advertised movie.

The only thing the ads got across is that IRS agent Harold Crick starts hearing a narrator in his head and that narrator plans to kill him. It really a sweet story about a guy trying to figure out if his life is a tragedy or a comedy and doing everything possible to make it a comedy.

My favorite thing about Stranger than Fiction is the literary nature of the whole thing. Deep down, I’m still an English nerd and lines like “Aren’t you relieved to know you’re not a golem?” make me spray ginger ale out of my nose. That kinda burns.

Stranger than Fiction is a really good movie, whereas Night at the Museum is just mediocre. Stranger than Fiction wins this match.

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