"At night in the museum, everything comes alive," says the blurb. Everything, that is, except the script.

With Ben Stiller, Ricky Gervais and Steve Coogan aboard, this should have been a prized comedy exhibit...but thanks to lacklustre dialogue and journeyman directing from Shawn Levy it's a bit of a knackered relic.

Stiller plays perpetual dreamer Larry Daley, a single dad who grudgingly accepts a lowly job as a security guard on the night shift at New York's National History Museum.

The old guard (literally) - Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney Bill Cobbs - hand over the keys and Larry's left on his own - or so he thinks. He senses something is not right and, lo!, the T-Rex skeleton in the main hall springs into life.

And it's not alone. Soon the marble halls are swarming with animated exhibits - the waxwork of Teddy Roosevelt (Williams) is on his feet, Attila The Hun is pacing the stairwells and Coogan's miniature Roman Centurion is locked in a power struggle with Owen Wilson's posse of titchy cowboys.

Perturbed, as you might be, Larry panics...but soon learns to marshall the walking, talking displays and even invites his son Jack to the museum after hours to witness the bizarre spectacle.

The spectacle is, in fact, a pretty impressive sight with Coogan's legions swarming about in a style reminiscent of Michael Bentine's Potty Time while the bone-chasing dinosaur skeleton appears one of Jurassic Park's cuddlier residents.

However, the potential to create something memorable is lost with director Shawn "The Pink Panther" Levy happy to aim the movie's appeal squarely at a young teenage audience.

The result is that Coogan and Gervais - essentially adult performers - are wasted while Stiller, the comedy chameleon, is left to shoulder a film that gets to be a bit of a deadweight.

It's a shame that what could have been a veritable V&A of comedy becomes a Keswick Pencil Museum of lost opportunities.

Tim Evans