I'm always skeptical about sequels. It is so hard to be satisfied when the expectations are high, just like when you see a movie after it's been hyped by critics and friends and you don't see what the fuss was all about.
I was particularly skeptical about the sequel to Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. The First Night at the Museum was so fun and so creative, that I wasn't sure the same magic could be repeated.
On Friday we took advantage of Steve's time off between jobs to sneak off to the movies for the afternoon with just Jack. It was such a treat to be treating our middle child to single child status for the afternoon, to spoil him with his choice of popcorn and candy with only Daddy to fight him for it.
We settled in to the stadium seating, one parent on each side, and prepared ourselves to be disappointed. But Battle of the Smithsonian was just as great as the first one. Jack's assessment was simple, "It was awesome!" All his favorite characters from the first movie were back: Dum Dum the Easter Island statue and Owen Wilson as the feisty cowboy Jedediah Smith, but there were plenty of new characters to spice up the mix. My favorite new character was Napoleon, so short yet so imperially full of himself.
Although Ben Stiller was still very funny, he was definitely upstaged in this movie by Amy Adams playing Amelia Earhart. Her "moxy" definitely lit up the screen and I was thrilled to see such a strong female role model in the movie.
One of the reasons I'm such a fan of this series is that it introduces history to my children long before they start studying it in school. As we left the theater, Jack made me promise to take him to all the museums we saw in the movie, both in New York and DC. Any movie that makes my kid beg to go to a museum is a great movie in my book.
