In Night At the Museum, Ben Stiller is forced to deal with more animals than Noah (incidentally, Steve Carrell will be running the Noah shtick up the flagpole this summer as Evan Almighty). Certainly the most impressive critter in this corral is the "cash cow" that this somewhat stilted Stiller vehicle has unleashed.

You can't really sit and unload a barrage of criticism at this film, actually you could, and I probably will - but what would be the point? It's obviously doing something right - pleasing crowds and achieving what it sets out to do. I don't suppose much of this will be news to anyone, but Stiller plays a divorced New Yorker, whose increasingly flaky work history is jeopardizing his custody standing with his 8 year old son whom he dotes on to a pathetic degree. Paul Rudd, plays his sons' new step Dad in a "blink and you missed it" performance. He made the most of every nuance in his 11 second turn.

Desperate for work he accepts a graveyard security position at the American Museum of Natural History, strangely the keys are turned over to him by a trio of retiring guards (including Dick Van Dyke and a loopy and thus occasionally funny Mickey Rooney). Also along for the briefest of rides is the hilarious Ricky Gervais (one of the prime movers of BBC's The Office, which has been flipped to the US with some success courtesy of Steve Carrell. Sadly as funny as some of these bit parts were, the writing for the two key players Stiller and Robin Williams was uneven and misguided. Instead of letting Stiller unleash his neurotic, insecure foil as all hell broke loose, they wrote him as more of a closet hero - a.la Bruce Willis or Indiana Jones. Strange, in that the set up here was far more suited to Stillers' Focker or "Something About Mary" persona. His "step aside while I save the day and impart a few profound life-messages," was all wrong amid the kooky animal madness he finds himself awash in.

The nonstop action was the films chief saving grace, and once you accept the pretty tough to swallow premise, there was some fun stuff watching everything unravel on the unsuspecting foil, especially for the youngsters. The secret the aging retirees fail to fully impress upon "the new guy" (Stiller) is that due to an Egyptian Relic, once business hours are through all of the animals and human legends come to life. Obviously the madcap hijinks resultant from T-Rex skeletons to lions, tigers and bears running amok every night makes it so the night watchman certainly earns his $11.25 an hour. Technically, the films biggest shortcoming involves its major conflict. It's not that it was implausible or outlandish it's just that it never really generated any tension or suspense. I think having Dick Van Dyke as the heavy was the problem. It sort of reduced the threat to kind of a fairy tale feel. As for Williams, his Theodore Roosevelt was an impressive visual ringer, but it wasn't written well enough to leap off the screen. I expected him to slip some sly Jumanji reference in, but negative. And frequent Stiller sidekick, Owen Wilson's "bit" part was similarly a luke warm.

Night at the Museum is far from a total waste, it's a fun family film and kids will get a kick out of it. Unfortunately it wasn't written in a fashion that offers consistent entertainment for the grown-ups. Or at least the pickier ones. But considering that it's the first real "rake it in" blockbuster of the year, I could be wrong.