IT STRIKES me that if you are going to make a film that is essentially a Jumanji knock-off, the last thing you want to do is reinforce the point by casting Robin Williams in a prominent role.

In Jumanji animals came to life in a board game and rampaged in the real world.

In Night at the Museum, it's the exhibits at the New York Natural History Museum that come to life when darkness falls.

It's all to do with the occult influence of a gold tablet belonging to an Egyptian pharaoh.

The elderly night watchmen - Dick van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobbs - plan to steal the tablet to fund their retirement but first they need someone to frame.

Enter Ben Stiller, a desperate divorcee who needs a job to keep his apartment so he can see his estranged son. Stiller is an unwitting patsy who finds himself in all sorts of mayhem.

Only Teddy Roosevelt - alias Robin Williams - can save him and stop him from going to jail thus losing his son forever.

There is such a lot wrong with Night at the Museum that it's hard to know where to start. For one thing Ben Stiller is terribly miscast.

Stiller's stock in trade is anger, bitterness, and general meanness.

He doesn't do the sort of warmth that this role calls for; in fact Robin Williams would have been a much better bet.

The special effects are good but audiences are now surely so sophisticated they ceased to be dazzled by this sort of thing a long time ago.

The effects are just the icing on the cake these days and without a decent script - and laughs are few and far between here - they are not going to cut it on their own.

Generally though the whole film seems uninspired depending, as it does, on the museum being the only such institution in the world without CCTV.

A quick swatch at some video footage and the nocturnal jig would be up.