D.C. may be known as Hollywood for ugly people, but for a little while last night, it was almost like we were just plain Hollywood. Granted, there was no actual red carpet at last night’s “red carpet” U.S. premiere — which was billed as a World Premiere despite Tuesday night’s London screening — of Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian at the National Air & Space Museum. But there was a crowd of excited fans lining the steps up to the museum’s doors, a red velvet rope line populated with microphone-wielding entertainment journalists inside, stressed-out personal assistants and handlers in headsets, heavily-made-up television correspondents, and discreet but tough-looking bodyguards. Substitute middle-aged male studio execs for the slightly paler middle-aged male government types who got invites to the event, and you could almost imagine you were at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

Why the unusual site for the premiere? The sequel to 2006’s wildly successful, wholly awful star-studded comedy Night at the Museum changes the venue from New York’s Museum of Natural History to the Smithsonian, mostly the Air & Space Museum. Additionally, the production was given unprecedented access to film in the actual museum, the one caveat being that they had to film during the museum’s regular operating hours without shutting the building down – which often meant filming with hundreds of tourists looking on. Ben Stiller found the experience invigorating: “It was exciting, we only had a few days here, but it was really fun for the energy, and you just don’t get that when you’re on a sound stage. It gets very insular.”