When Night at the Museum debuted in late 2006, no one -- including the star, Ben Stiller -- thought it would turn into a colossal hit, but $250M-plus later it has proven that family comedies can stand up to heavyweight genre pictures. With numbers like that, it's no surprise that 20th Century Fox decided to go back for another.
In Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Stiller returns as Larry Daley, now an inventor and entrepreneur, rather than a night security guard. However, when Daley's friends are moved into federal storage at the Smithsonian Institution, he is called on to help out against the second coming of Pharaoh Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria), who plans to take over the world.
All of Daley's friends -- Robin Williams and Owen Wilson reprise their roles as Teddy Roosevelt and Jedediah, respectively, among others -- are back, and we get to meet many new faces, as well. This time around, Stiller's character has a love interest in the form of Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart. So, how does one go about introducing a romance between a man and, well, a mannequin? Stiller told Entertainment Weekly:
We constantly wrestled with "How much of a relationship with a wax dummy is he going to have?" We had to figure out how to resolve that.
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian also stars Christopher Guest as Ivan the Terrible, Steve Coogan as Octavius, and features Dick Van Dyke as Cecil Fredericks.