What: Museum Alive
Where: Imax Victoria
When: Daily, 11 a.m., 1, 3 and 5 p.m.
Tickets and information: imaxvictoria.com or 250-953-4629
Rating: Four stars (out of five)
Before the first of many extinct creatures whose skeletons populate London’s Natural History Museum springs to life, it’s hard not to think of Night at the Museum.
Sir David Attenborough is no Ben Stiller, who played the night watchman in the Night at the Museum comedies, of course. This is not just a good thing, but one of the chief charms of Museum Alive, a wildlife documentary that just opened at Imax Victoria.
The rumpled, avuncular adventurer takes us on a nocturnal journey through the famous neo-Gothic London museum, as perfect a fit as narrator as the film’s massive creatures are for the IMAX screen that accommodates them.
The 40-minute nature documentary is book-ended by the departure of the museum’s security guard after the last visitor of the day has left, and his return the following morning.
In the intervening hours, Attenborough becomes an overnight tour guide, talking about and interacting with fossils from its exhibits animated through the wonders of photorealistic CGI.
As our host roams the museum’s hallowed halls, giant skeletons are suddenly enveloped by flesh and fur, with all manner of species lurching and leaping to virtual life before our eyes.
Museum Alive, from the makers of Penguins 3D and Galapagos 3D, is a prime example of 3D effects being used to great effect.
(For those who prefer a traditional non-3D presentation, there’s a single screening daily in this format.)
Highlights of the film include encounters with a huge, fearsome bird of prey, the Haast eagle; the Moa, a giant, flightless bird from New Zealand that makes a spectacular entrance after pecking her way out of her glass cage; a giant ground sloth; a huge prehistoric snake aptly dubbed a Gigantophis; a giant ape; a Dodo bird; a prowling sabre-toothed cat called a Smilodon; and “Dippy,” a ravenous replica of a 26-metre-long dinosaur that Attenborough playfully “feeds” from a balcony.
It helps immensely that Attenborough, wandering around in a wrinkled, short-sleeved shirt and khakis, provides insight and knowledge with such infectious, almost child-like enthusiasm.
It also seems appropriate that Museum Alive is being shown in a cinema that is an integral component of Victoria’s own treasured museum, and likely to encourage more visits to an institution many take for granted.
Just don’t expect the Royal B.C. Museum’s resident woolly mammoth to spring to life in the Natural History Gallery and wreak havoc.
That kind of action only happens in the movies, and thank heavens for that.
