Amy Adams and Ben Stiller in 'Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian'. (20th Century Fox)

Not that we’re singling Stiller out. Pretty much no one involved with this listless, rote sequel to the 2006 smash hit seems to have put much effort into it. After all, the original made half a billion dollars at the box office the world over. With numbers like that, a built-in audience for a sequel is guaranteed to line up on opening weekend.

So screenwriters Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon didn’t think too long to come up with a premise for the new movie: They just take the original story and tell it again, transplanting it from New York’s Museum of Natural History to Washington, D.C., with practically the same baddie: The Egyptian dictator Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria), the older brother of the first film’s villain, who shares the same dream of world domination.

Returning director Shawn Levy (The Pink Panther, Just Married, Cheaper by the Dozen), the sort of filmmaker who put the hack in hackwork, lets the special-effects crew take over the show, giving them lots of new wax figures and museum displays to animate, including a giant octopus and a giant Abraham Lincoln statue. New to the ensemble of magic: Napoleon Bonaparte (Alan Chabat) and Ivan the Terrible (a wasted Christopher Guest), who prefers to be called Ivan the Awesome. No, I did not make that up.

Robin Williams and Ricky Gervais return for extended cameos (Gervais in particular looks embarrassed to be here.) Amy Adams does her best Katharine Hepburn impression as Amelia Earhart: She and Azaria are the only members of the cast who really, really try, to no avail. Saturday Night Live’s Bill Hader annoys greatly as General Custer, and Owen Wilson consents to a screen credit this time as the miniature cowboy Jedediah, saddled with such lines as “You’re crazier than a road lizard!’’

There’s no sense in giving family films a pass just because they’re intended for children. If they could make a good kids’ movie out of Kit Kittredge, then they can make a good kids’ movie out of anything. Whether you’re 6 or 60, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is crap — and it’ll make a gazillion dollars.

R E V I E W

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

D

Rated PG: Mock violence

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes. An eternity!

The verdict: ‘Night’ errant.

Now showing: Area theaters

— Rene Rodriguez

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