Bovie Movie

With this all-star Cinerama epic, producer/director Stanley Kramer vowed to make “the comedy that would end all comedies.” The story begins during a massive traffic jam, caused by reckless driver Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), who, before (literally) kicking the bucket, cryptically tells the assembled drivers that he’s buried a fortune in stolen loot, “under the Big W.” The various motorists setting out on a mad scramble include a dentist (Sid Caesar) and his wife (Edie Adams); a henpecked husband (Milton Berle) accompanied by his mother-in-law (Ethel Merman) and his beatnik brother-in-law (Dick Shawn); a pair of comedy writers (Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney); and a variety of assorted nuts including a slow-wit (Jonathan Winters), a wheeler-dealer (Phil Silvers), and a pair of covetous cabdrivers (Peter Falk and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson). Monitoring every move that the fortune hunters make is a scrupulously honest police detective (Spencer Tracy). Virtually every lead, supporting, and bit part in the picture is filled by a well-known comic actor: the laughspinning lineup also includes Carl Reiner, Terry-Thomas, Arnold Stang, Buster Keaton, Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, and The Three Stooges, who get one of the picture’s biggest laughs by standing stock still and uttering not a word. Two prominent comedians are conspicuous by their absence: Groucho Marx refused to appear when Kramer couldn’t meet his price, while Stan Laurel declined because he felt he was too old-looking to be funny. Available for years in its 154-minute general release version, the film was restored to its roadshow length of 175 minutes on home video; the search goes on for a missing Buster Keaton routine, reportedly excised on the eve of the picture’s premiere.

The new night watchman at New York’s Museum of Natural History finds that the job comes with more responsibility than he ever dreamed in this wild fantasy comedy directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Mickey Rooney, and Dick Van Dyke. Larry Daley (Stiller) is a kind-hearted dreamer who always knew that he was destined for greatness, he just never quite knew how. None of his ideas or inventions has panned out, so with a heavy heart, he takes a regular job as a lowly graveyard-shift security guard at the Museum of Natural History in order to provide a more stable life for himself and his ten-year-old son. His first night on the job, however, he finds that guardianship of the museum is far from stable — at nightfall, an Egyptian spell brings the artifacts and wax figures to life! With Attila the Hun charging to war through the hallways, the diorama miniatures embroiled in a deadly feud, and a two-ton Tyrannosaurus Rex nagging to play fetch, Larry has half a mind to turn tail and run. On top of cleaning up after two million years of historical chaos every night, he also has to make sure that not a single museum piece leaves the building — from the bratty Capuchin monkey in the African exhibit, to the life-sized Neanderthal in the prehistoric display — because if morning light falls on an escaped artifact, it will turn to dust. Larry turns to a wax replica of President Roosevelt (Williams) for a little advice on keeping things in tact, but Teddy seems to think that a man of Larry’s greatness needs little help. Larry isn’t sure if the former commander in chief is right; this is hardly what he signed up for, but he can’t pass up the chance to care for a museum where history really does come to life.