The paradox of “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” is that a movie so bursting with novelty can feel so utterly familiar. This is partly because it’s a sequel, of course, but even the first “Night at the Museum,” directed, as this one is, by Shawn Levy, was a mixture of old hat and cool new stuff.

That may just be the formula for pleasant, innocuous and intermittently thrilling family entertainment. Keep the emotions safe, simple and knowable, and focus the younger audience’s attention on a magic show of cute, funny, zany creatures and characters while throwing some half-clever verbal humor at the older kids and the accompanying parents. Apply a touch of prestige, on loan from widely admired educational and cultural institutions and voilà. You can’t lose.

Where Ben Stiller fits in all of this remains a bit of a puzzle, but here he is again, a virtuoso of hostility playing the lead in a warm and fuzzy family comedy.

Mr. Stiller is Larry Daley, whose learning of an important life lesson (as in the first installment), frames the nocturnal shenanigans that are the movie’s reason for being. In “Night at the Museum” he was a drifting divorced dad who needed to reconnect with his son and learn to follow his dreams. Now, having followed them to unlikely success as an inventor and late-night infomercial star, he must again reconnect with his very patient son (Jake Cherry) and also learn to stop following his dreams, or follow different ones, or something.

Whatever. Mr. Stiller’s two best scenes involve his sparring with the always welcome Jonah Hill and being slapped around by a couple of monkeys. Otherwise he’s on hand to be a grinning, bossy, anxious foil for the various historical figures and artworks that spring magically to life when the sun goes down. Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan are back as Jedediah and Octavius, two miniature warriors from different epochs (one cowboy, one Roman), and Robin Williams takes another turn as Teddy Roosevelt. There are some bobble-headed Einsteins, a giant marble Abraham Lincoln (who steps down off his memorial to knock a few heads together), Gen. George Custer (Bill Hader) and a smattering of classic paintings, sculptures and photographs.

The conjuring of all these artifacts — many of them really on display in various parts of Smithsonian — is delightful and often ingenious. Whether the movie pays irreverent homage to cultural treasures or trivializes them for fun and profit is an interesting question. It seems to me that, by jolting inanimate objects into action-movie service, “Night at the Museum” does its part to encourage the museum world’s embrace of spectacle, sensationalism and pseudo-pedagogical pop-cultural pandering. (A brief attempt to mock this tendency is by far the least convincing thing in the movie.)

So don’t take your children expecting that they’ll learn anything. But if you do take them, you will at least be able to enjoy Hank Azaria and Amy Adams, who play a fictitious pharaoh named Kahmunrah and the famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart. Historical accuracy is not the point. No Egyptian potentate ever spoke in a lisping, aristocratic British accent, but Mr. Azaria is the master of funny voices, and he does fine work as the heavy. Ms. Adams, impersonating Earhart as a flame-haired screwball-comedy heroine, is entirely delightful, though whether the pioneering pilot would ever have developed a crush on Ben Stiller is a matter for scholars to ponder. Perhaps the only such matter in this shallow and harmlessly diverting picture.

“Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It has some noisy fights and moments of apparent danger.

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM

Battle of the Smithsonian

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Shawn Levy; written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon; director of photography, John Schwartzman; edited by Don Zimmerman and Dean Zimmerman; music by Alan Silvestri; production designer, Claude Paré; produced by Mr. Levy, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

WITH: Ben Stiller (Larry Daley), Jake Cherry (Nick Daley), Amy Adams (Amelia Earhart), Owen Wilson (Jedediah), Hank Azaria (Kahmunrah), Christopher Guest (Ivan the Terrible), Alain Chabat (Napoleon), Steve Coogan (Octavius), Ricky Gervais (Dr. McPhee), Bill Hader (General Custer), Jon Bernthal (Al Capone) and Robin Williams (Teddy Roosevelt).