Playing at nine out of 10 screens over the New Year holidays, "Night at the Museum" may represent the biggest overkill we'll ever see. It monopolised more halls than "Casino Royale". There must be a shortage of good movies lately.

At best, "Museum" is a tame comedy, with some bright moments, especially those between Ben Stiller and Dexter the monkey as they engage in a brutal slapping contest, something not seen since the Three Stooges era.

Overall, though, the jokes are too mild and the casting is strange, with Robin Williams, a left-wing liberal, to play Theodore Roosevelt, the right-wing bully who started the American "empire". Now, that's a joke.

Still, all flaws aside, the film is a must-see for older film buffs. Where else can you get to see Dick Van Dyke, age 81, and Mickey Rooney, age 86, with excellent parts as guards at a spooky museum?

It is the presence of these legends, more than anything else, that's prevented critics from lambasting "Night at the Museum" into oblivion.

Owen Wilson as a gung-ho cowboy in charge of building railroads, using Chinese coolies, is taxing, to say the least.

Lead actress Carla Gugino, playing a history student, is so slushy she makes you want to curl up and die, as when she tells a historical figure, "You rock!"

Well, squirm as we must, "Museum" is certainly not made for people with above-average intelligence - in fact, quite the contrary.

The script says it all: Forget real history, go with made-up propaganda that passes off as history.

The notion of an Egyptian mummy being displayed in a small American museum seems rather odd. But again, we must be polite: Hollywood is not known to carefully weigh probabilities and possibilities.

The whole idea is to make money out of poor fellows who will pay anything over the holidays just to avoid terrible shows on cable and public television.

Censorship today is more pervasive and intrusive than ever before.

Every scene on television with a cigarette, a knife or a gun is blurred by dim-witted, Vaseline-wielding, self-righteous buffoons whose idea of morality goes beyond the bounds of common sense.

Hanuman blames no one for fleeing homes, switching off the TV and going to theatres to escape the antics of media prudes who blot out scenes that contain a perceived offensive object.

Have we become an insane society? What happened to tolerance and moderation?

"Night at the Museum" is a feel-good movie. It also wakes us up to the fact that America, for all its goofiness and Victorian standards, may shame us - and our censors.

by hanuman