Can a movie just be made for the fun of it? Is it against movie-making morality to allow films with no greater meaning? Is it against the rules to belay blame for leaps in logic or any real attempt to accomplish anything more than guilty pleasure? Is it okay to make a sequel of Night at the Museum?

Absolutely!

I’m a film student. Meticulous professors with doctorates have taken particular pains to train me how to appreciate and analyze Film, which is to be taken as a work of art and a reflection of humankind.

But I struggle to intermingle this supercilious affectation with my honest-to-goodness, red-blooded-American need to be heartily entertained for no good reason. Ben Stiller is the king of supercilious comedy, with Zoolander and Something About Mary among his most lauded feats. Yet he manages, somehow, to involve us in the characters and to care about them in all their ridiculousness while being amused by their often-difficult-to-watch (and believe) struggles.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is a happy sequel that follows Larry (Stiller), a night guard at a museum where the exhibits come to life at night. He’s since quit his job and become a popular As-Seen-On-TV inventor and TV host. He’s rich, influential...and miserable. His previous job as night guard had him going on numerous adventures that included shooting the breeze with Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams), breaking up fights between Lilliputian cowboys and Roman legions led by Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan, respectively, and playing fetch with a T-Rex skeleton. Now, the best part of his week is a meeting with Wal-Mart execs. Not ideal.

So when Larry finds out that all the exhibits (aka: his friends) from the New York museum are being shipped to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. for storage and being replaced by digital, interactive exhibits, Larry’s heartbroken. Moreover, the magical Egyptian tablet that allows them to awaken every night is staying in New York, meaning these exhibits have come to life for the last time. They are going to D.C. to die.

But, when one of the exhibits steals the tablet and brings it to the Smithsonian, the real trouble starts. Now an evil Egyptian pharaoh at the Smithsonian Institute is brought to life and has designs to take over the world. It’s up to Larry to stop him, with the help of all the other exhibits at the Smithsonian, including his trusty New York friends in storage.

Along the way, Larry pals up with Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams), the Lincoln Memorial, and General Custer while the Egyptian pharaoh (Hank Azaria) builds his own team de resistance: Ivan the Terrible, Al Capone, and Napoleon.

The movie is a hoot. It’s action-packed and full of laughs that aren’t surprising or new, just nicely performed.

The gaps in logic are often hard to ignore, like why there are no security guards rushing on the scene or alarms sounding, even as Larry and Amelia Earhart crash the Wright Brother’s canvas plane into the Smithsonian Institute or why a giant octopus plays in the Reflecting Pool.

But reason aside, Battle of the Smithsonian seems to have been made purely for the fun of a good laugh. There are few rules, either in the reality of the world, or in the making of the film. Hank Azaria and Jonah Hill (a Smithsonian night guard) are allowed to improv at will, often hitting the funny mark, but altogether leaving a feeling of purposelessness beyond allowing two funny guys to be funny. Amelia Earhart is a one-note character, fleshed out only by Amy Adams’s talent, not by any help of the writers—nevertheless, the one-note is funny enough to watch for two hours without heckling.

All told, there are a myriad of movie-making flaws in the film that are, in the end, completely forgiven by the performances. How can you be angry at a movie that’s given you the gift of hearty laughter? I’d pay $10 for that any day.