6. Night at the Museum (2006), dir. Shawn Levy

[strange_complex]

Watched this evening on Channel 4, after recent posts by dakegra and ashavah reminded me that I'd always been mildly intrigued by the character of the Roman soldier (Octavius, played by Steve Coogan) in the first one.

He's not the biggest character in the film (literally - he is a 3" tall figurine), but he does get a decent amount of screen-time, and is really very cute. He likes to FIGHT and be NOBLE and GLORIOUS. What really interested me, though, was the explicit links drawn between him and the Cowboy character, Jedediah (Owen Wilson). They start out trying to colonise each other's territory, but Ben Stiller's character eventually convinces them that, apart from having been born 2000 years apart, they are basically just the same, and they end up becoming firm friends.

And I love this, because there is a long-standing tradition of viewing the European settlement of America as a modern equivalent of Roman colonisation - this is why, for example, William Penn planned Philadelphia on the same basic model as a typical Roman colony. On that analogy, the Wild West is a lot like the frontier zones where the legions were based (though less organised, obviously), so the link the film is drawing is firmly rooted in established traditions of Classical receptions. It's nice to know that's still a strong enough idea to crop up in a kids' comedy run-around. Even if it is obviously completely morally reprehensible to glorify imperialist expansion of any kind, of course...

Other than that, it was basically light-hearted brain-candy, with NEANDERTHALS and WOOLLY MAMMOTHS and DICK VAN DYKE. But I did think it had very stylish opening credits, and a lovely muted golden autumnal colour-palette. The only down-side was Ricky Gervais' character, who was just a straight-forward rip-off of his role from The Office, and really didn't work in the context of the rest of the characters at all.

I don't think I'll bother paying actual money to see the sequel in the cinema, but I'm glad I bothered to catch this one on TV.

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Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

This Saturday I was at the strangest museum cum park kind of thing near York. It was clearly geared up for the school visit and was almost empty on bank holiday saturday. In addition to a (piss poor) farm museum with a few half-heartedly labelled tractors and a frankly crap city zoo (ooh, goats and sheep, you're spoiling us), it had a small reconstructed danelaw village (a dozen or so wattle and daub huts) a tiny tudor cottage and garden and a reconstructed Roman fort with all the parts labelled in Latin and English. All of these were empty and clearly going to be filled with reenactors whenever a party of school kids came around.

I mention this because right in the middle of the roman fort was a cowboy town with a dozen or so disspirited cowboy reenactors wandering about ready to explain horseshoes, gunfights and telegraphs to anyone who wanted it. Very weird experience.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course, York's frontier-town era... A glorious episode in the town's history! :-S

[steer.livejournal.com]

The rootinest tootinest tourist town in Yorkshire.

What I really want to know is when they do Roman reenactment, presumably the cowboy town buildings are still there in the fort -- do they just calmly get on with forming tortoises and declining verbs while ignoring the telegraph office and saloon.