The premise for the first film was a simple one: the exhibits of a museum come to life at night. It must have been the shortest meeting ever when it came to discussing the storyline for a sequel, with just the extra word ‘again’ added to the original idea.

Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) is now a successful inventor, with his latest invention being the glow in the dark torch. On returning to New York’s Museum of Natural History, he discovers that many of the exhibits that came to life at night when he worked there as a guard, are now being shipped out to be put into storage.

With his friends all crated off - including Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and Octavius (Steve Coogan) – Larry heads off to the largest museum in the world – the Smithsonian, in a bid to rescue them. Once there though, not only do his old, old chums come to life, but so does every exhibit on show at the museum. This leads to the Egyptian pharaoh Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria) wanting to open up a portal to all things evil, in a bid to take over the world. He’s ably assisted by some of history’s most notorious characters, such as Napoleon, Al Capone and Ivan The Terrible.

I'm thinking I need a new agent.

However Larry’s not alone, as he’s also helped by Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Earhart and a whole bunch of bobble-headed Einsteins. But is it enough?

So, not a great leap forward from the first flick then. In its defence, there is the added bonus of an evildoer in the form of Azaria’s Kahmunrah; the only problem is that Azaria may have been voicing Simpsons characters for one season too many, as his pharaoh has loud echoes of Stewie from Family Guy. In fact, you could close your eyes and swear blind that Stewie was moonlighting. Surely if anyone could have come up with an original voice, he could have done?

This time round, Larry also gets a love interest in the jodhpur-wearing shape of Amelia Earhart, played by Amy Adams. Here we find Adams doing her best Katherine Hepburn impersonation; but with Azaria claiming he was using Boris Karloff for inspiration for his Egyptian baddie, it could possibly be someone else.

In fairness, the love interest adds nothing to the film, nor should it, as it was always supposed to be about history coming to life. Sadly, some of the other characters, like Capone and terrible Ivan, seem a bit on the flat side. And after Napoleon was portrayed so brilliantly in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, they probably should have picked another historical figure to use – surely there were still plenty to choose from?

As sequels go then, this is a pretty lazy one. There may well be more historical characters running around on a bigger stage, but the script’s humour quota appears to have shrunk as a consequence. When you consider the amount of comic talent involved, that’s borderline unforgiveable.

You know a film is in trouble when one of the few big laughs it gets, is down to a couple of monkeys slapping Stiller around. Maybe they were simply doing the audience a favour. Only history will tell if they knocked enough sense into him regarding a third museum outing. But we’re certainly with the monkeys on this one.