FILM OF THE WEEK

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (PG) 2/5

Dir: Shawn Levy With: Ben Stiller, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Robin Williams

IN THE posters for Night at the Museum, Ben Stiller strikes the classic stance of the night-watchman: one hip higher than the other, torch held above the shoulder like a stubby javelin ready to be thrown. There's something about the pose that suggests weeks of practise in front of the mirror. Like poster, like movie. Night at the Museum, while impeccably polished, is a pale imitation of what a Christmas blockbuster should be.

Not that you expect a film about a museum where the exhibits come alive after dark to be a slice of cinema verite. Even so, when dollars-100m has been spent, the cast includes Dick Van Dyke and Ben Stiller, box office kings of yesteryear and today, and the man in charge is Shawn Levy, one of the most commercially successful directors around, you anticipate a bit of a workout for the laughter muscles. Night at the Museum gives them more of a Boxing Day amble to the newsagents.

Stiller is Larry, a likeable New Yorker who has trouble holding down a job. As he tells his unimpressed son, he doesn't want to dress up "in a monkey suit and tie" like his ex-wife's stockbroker boyfriend. Forced to take any position for fear of losing access to his son, he rolls up at the Museum of Natural History to find the current guards, Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs, preparing to go quietly into the good night of retirement. Their advice to Larry is don't let anything into the museum - or out.

He discovers what they mean when he is being chased around the place by a T-Rex, Attila the Hun, lions and other escapees.

There's something fantastic about this museum, and for once it's not the gift shop. Stiller, Robin Williams (playing Teddy Roosevelt), Owen Wilson (a feisty cowboy), and Steve Coogan (lugubrious Roman soldier) , have a ball as chaos reigns. Williams, star of that other inanimateobjects-come-to-life caper Jumanji, presumably gave Stiller tips on looking terrified in the presence of computer-generated animals. But as in Meet the Parents, it's a real creature that supplies Stiller with his funniest scenes. His feud with Dexter the capuchin, the King Kong of cheeky monkeys, is a treat.

Apart from the monkey business there's not a lot more to Museum other than special effects and the customary schmaltz. It's not enough for the characters just to be silly - they must go on emotional journeys to discover their inner, better selves. When the love-in starts, the film kisses goodbye to whatever sparkle it has left.

Part of the fun lies in seeing how Van Dyke and company are holding up. Pretty well, even if Rooney, playing the pugnacious member of the trio, is a little too in touch with his inner Glaswegian and grows tiresome after a while. Just think. Stiller and chums (including Ricky Gervais on familiar form as a tongue-tied museum boss) will one day be the comedy old guard themselves. T-Rex or B Stiller, antiquity comes to us all.

Opens on Boxing Day

ALSO SHOWING

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS (15)

Dir: Clint Eastwood With: Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach 3/5

CLINT Eastwood found himself the toast of the American right for his portrayal of the marines who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. That's toast as in scorched on all sides. His sin: pointing out that truth is among the first casualties of war. Hardly shocking in these post Private Jessica Lynch days, but Joe Rosenthal's famous photograph of the men atop Mount Suribachi holds a special place in American affections. It's not just the picture that's black and white; it's how part of American society expects war to be.

Flags of our Fathers is based on the best-selling book by Ron Powers and James Bradley, whose father was one of the six men in the photograph. It opens with the Bradley character interviewing old soldiers in the present day, before cutting to early 1945 and the charred battle ground of Iwo Jima. Eastwood then sets up the third part of the story - what happened in-between. Three of the men died in the battle that raged on for another month and a half after the flag raising. Another three were brought home, feted as heroes, and sent on a crosscountry tour to flog war bonds. Whether they were the right three is one of the matters Eastwood tries to nail down.

As Eastwood moves between the different sections of the film, his attempt to unravel who did what and when itself unravels, and the full story behind the photo gets lost amid narrative chaos. In any case, as the film itself makes clear, it was known from the off that the f lag-raising had not been quite as straightforward as it seemed. The rest of what Eastwood is saying, that war is hell on the men who fight it, has been conveyed countless times before, not least by the film's producer, Steven Spielberg, in Saving Private Ryan.

Flags has not had the success that was expected at the US box office. Weariness with the all-tooreal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the war picture genre as a whole, have been blamed, as well as Eastwood's decision to eschew big-name stars in favour of young unknowns. This suggests Flags is a failure, and as a straightdown-the-line war drama it is far from that. Though it is cutting the film more slack than it deserves, perhaps its worth can only properly be judged alongside its companion piece, Letters from Iwo Jima, which tells the story from the Japanese side.

The US release date for Letters has been brought forward to make it eligible for Oscar consideration. The last time this happened the film was Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, which went on to win four Oscars. Don't write the man with no name off just yet.

Opens on December 22

PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER (15) 4/5

Dir: Tom Tykwer With: Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman

IN GOGOL'S short story, The Nose, Major Kovalev wakes up to find his proboscis has not only left his face but is walking around St Petersburg posing as a councillor. Only a beady-eyed policeman prevents it hopping a stagecoach to Riga. In Tom Twyker's Perfume, the nose of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) appears capable of even greater feats.

Grenouille, as readers of Patrick Suskind's novel will know, had a difficult birth. Shot out of his mother's body on to a pile of stinking fish heads, he was meant to be swept away with the rubbish. The runt had two things going for him: a lust for life and a genius for identifying scents. After surviving a childhood so harsh it would have made Dickens faint, Grenouille set out to be the greatest perfumer of all time. Unfortunately for the women of France, he required more than patchouli oil to create his ultimate perfume. As his diabolical scheme to capture and distill beauty unfolds, le tout France will come to fear him.

Suskind's novel, with its meticulous descriptions of eighteenth-century Paris in all its fetidness, was a banquet for the senses. Fearing no director could do his book justice, the writer resisted for many years all offers to turn it into a film. Tykwer, with the assistance of production designer Uli Hanisch, has proved those misgivings unfounded. There are scenes of breathtaking gorgeousness in Perfume, particularly when the action moves to Provence, and there are many, as in the book, that leave the stomach churning.

Whishaw makes a perfect Grenouille. It's not the nose, for there are far more impressive schnozes on display here. There's the one belonging to Dustin Hoffman, playing Guiseppe Baldini, who takes Grenouille on as his apprentice; and Alan Rickman, the rich noble destined to figure in the perfumer's grisly plan. Neither Hoffman, with an Italian accent straight outta Brooklyn, and the typically sneering Rickman, dominates the screen like Whishaw. At turns grotesque, tragic, haunting, pathetic; he is the beating heart of the piece.

The trouble with such a repulsive character is that you naturally recoil from him, and the film ultimately falls victim to the same instinct. Sitting through Perfume is rather like watching a very long perfume ad, albeit one that owes more to Hieronymus Bosch than the House of Chanel. While dazzled by the style, one is never entirely seduced by the substance.

Opens on Boxing Day

ZOOM (PG) 1/5

Dir: Peter Hewitt With: Tim Allen, Courteney Cox, Chevy Chase, Rip Torn

AS IF the Santa Clause series was not enough of a seasonal crime against humanity, Tim Allen returns in this mirthless tale of a retired superhero, Captain Zoom, persuaded to climb back into the Lycra to train a squad of young recruits.

Director Peter Hewitt showed he could make children's films with adult appeal when he cast Bill Murray as the voice of Garfield. In Zoom, he nods to the crumblies again by having Chevy Chase as a bumbling scientist and Rip Torn as a swivel-eyed general. Torn emerges from the experience with more of his dignity intact than Chase, who is variously covered in snot, spray and shame. When Allen looks at the grey, balding Chase and says, "Wow, you got old, " it's a moment to wince rather than smile. Courteney Cox (Monica from Friends) falls down a lot, Allen is sarky and annoying, and the plot is straight out of The Invisibles. By the time the youngsters graduate and are given superhero names such as Wonder, Houdini, Princess and Mega Boy, your own crew will be christening themselves Bored, Irritated, Puzzled and Asleep.

Opens on December 22

I SAW BEN BARKA GET KILLED (12A) 4/5

Dir: Serge Le Peron, Said Smihi With: Charles Berling, Simon Abkarian, Josiane Balasko

THIS is a stylish and riveting account of the real-life abduction of Moroccan dissident Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris in the 1960s. Charles Berling is superb as Georges Figon, the small-time chancer who helps lure Barka to France on the pretext of taking part in a documentary. This is an extraordinary story that becomes more so in Serge Le Peron's noirish retelling. Fact, imagination and footage from the time combine to expose secret service skulduggery and the duping of Barka's supporters.

Glasgow Film Theatre, December 22-23, 27-28

IT'S A BOY GIRL THING (12A) 2/5

Dir: Nick Hurran With: Kevin Zegers, Samaire Armstrong, Sharon Osbourne

FOLLOWING a trip to the local museum, the class swot and the school jock trade bodies and bad habits in a film sure to please teen audiences and have everyone else asking why the film-makers bovvered. Kevin Zegers (Transamerica) is Woody, and Samaire Armstrong (Anna in TV's The OC) are the opposites who end up attracted to each other. The film is remarkable in that it has Elton John as its executive producer and stars Sharon Osbourne, in her first feature film role, as Woody's mum. Having watched the housewife-turnedsuperstar on screen, one has to say, in the manner of Ozzie, "Shaaaarrrron! Acting!

Noooooooooooo!"

Opens Boxing Day