Review: Ultimate Spider-Man "Halloween Night at the Museum"

At the time of this writing, "Halloween Night at the Museum" is the worst-ranked episode of Ultimate Spider-Man on IMDb, ranking at 6.1 stars out of 10. (Second place is a three-way tie between "Sinister Six," "House Arrest," and "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" at 6.9.) Now, I think this particular episode's score should be taken with a grain of salt. You can't really deny that a lot of people are just going to be upset that this show is crossing over with a live-action kidcom. Heck, I was one of those people who spewed hate at the idea since hearing about it.

But as I've said before, I give everything a fair chance here at the NewtCave. And by Odin's beard, was that ever put to the test.

For this initial Review, I'm going to ignore the fact that this is a crossover. I'm going to treat it the same as any other episode of the show. I'm going to ask myself how this episode fares in a standalone context, independent of any soul-crushing, white bread, unfunny Disney sitcoms.

For the purposes of this first Review, this is just a random group of multi-ethnic kids.

Plot
I think the line between homage and ripoff has been, well, maybe not completely crossed, but the writers can probably see the line from where this episode stands. Not only is this episode ripping off Night at the Museum, they actually called this episode "Halloween Night at the Museum." Because it's Night at the Museum, but, like, at Halloween. There's nothing wrong with doing a riff on Night at the Museum, of course. But you should really do something new with it.

But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Let's now assume that they didn't start off by saying "Let's just do Night at the Museum. But, like, at Halloween."

Perhaps this episode's similarity was entirely a coincidence, and they suddenly realized the similarity and said "Wait a minute, this is just like that Ben Stiller movie! Not Meet the Parents, the other one!"  So they slapped a title on the episode that acknowledges the similarity, even if it was unintentional.

But perhaps the writers started off fully intending to write an episode parodying Night at the Museum... which ended up doing nothing new with the idea other than "This is just like that movie you kids like! But, like, at Halloween!"

And if I had to guess, I think that's what happened here. I think this episode started off with the intent to be a jab at Night at the Museum before taking a left turn directly into uninspired ripoff because they refused to do anything new with the formula.

I mean, the Night at the Museum formula is in full force here. Thanks to a magical artifact, a museum's exhibits have come to life after-hours. (The presence of an evil villain hints more at Night at the Museum 2's plot, though.) Hijinks ensue. Both the film and the episode have a dinosaur skeleton that comes to life, cavemen antics, and Night at the Museum 2 and this episode both have evil villains who want the magical MacGuffin for their own nefarious purposes.

Although, to be completely fair, this episode does one thing that can be seen as successfully parodying Night at the Museum; the guard doesn't save the day (or night, as it were), but instead turns into a villain for the kids to fight.

So whatever the intent, whatever process they went through to write this episode... it's just Night at the Museum. With Spider-Man. And the cast of Jessie. At Halloween.

Characters
Spider-Man
This is not Spider-Man's story. Most of the character growth and character focus gets put on Jessie and the kids. Despite the fact that they've never appeared before and never will again, this is their story. I'll get to that at the end.

Morgan le Fay
Sure, the choice of character was cliche, but the performance was actually kind of enjoyable. Sure, she seemed more like a villain from Wizards of Waverly Place, but it was at least a memorable performance, which is more than I can say for Morgan's appearance in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Her cheerful exuberance was actually a little endearing, if a little annoying at times. But she was still kind of a weak threat, overall. Which is why we also had...

Jack O'Lantern
He was freakin' awesome. And all he was there for was to give the team someone to fight in the second act besides living exhibits. Why couldn't he be Morgan's minion throughout the episode? Some brawn to go with her magic? Opportunity: missed.

Jessie and the Kids
As for their story, it's honestly not terrible.

No, I'm being serious. First of all, Jessie and the kids all have competent voice actors. The set-up might be swiped from a movie, but the characters aren't terribly written or acted. Jessie says it herself. "Not all heroes are super." That's a good lesson, especially for a show that puts a lot of emphasis on superheroes and super spies.

Unfortunately, the civilians might be a bit too quick to adjust to the madness. And I'd also say that there are just too many kids. None of them get a chance to really shine but Jessie, and that's to the detriment of the episode. I mean, why did those kids even get that armor? Zuri had working Doc Ock arms that never became important!

At the time of this episode's airing, it was without a doubt the worst episode... of Season 3. But that's mostly because Season 3 is actually a lot better than the first two seasons.

On the one hand, it's very disappointing to not have some kind of team-up, like with Blade last year, but this wasn't what I'd actually call "bad." Don't get me wrong, this episode was in no way what I'd call "good," but not necessarily "bad." It wasn't good enough to enjoy, but it also wasn't bad enough to enjoy. Well, let me put it this way....

• "Blade and the Howling Commandos": Enjoyably good.
• "Spidah-Man": Enjoyably bad.
• "Halloween Night at the Museum": S'okay.

If you view this episode as a standalone episode, independent of any crossover material, it's not entirely terrible. It's not necessarily good, but it's not actively awful. I've seen much worse from this show. Yeah, it's not the best episode, but even if this ends up being the worst episode of Season 3, then Season 3 will absolutely rock compared to the earlier seasons. But if you look at this episode as a crossover... well, that deserves its own whole Review.