Author Milan Trenc's tall tale about the supernatural goings-on at New York's American Museum of Natural History -- in which every statue and figurine mysteriously comes to life at night -- makes for a perfectly endurable 32-page children's book.

In padding out that premise to accommodate a 108-minute feature, scribes Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon have supplied some perfunctory conflict, a creaky father-son drama and a few twists to explain the nocturnal phenomenon. But unlike the recent "Zathura," which elaborated on its slim picture-book conceit with warmth, emotion and narrative surprise,...