Ben Stiller Isn't Funny. Or So He Says . . .

In an earlier generation, he concedes, he might not have fared so well. "Night at the Museum" is a showpiece for comedic greats past and present, including Robin Williams, Ricky Gervais, Mickey Rooney and Dick Van Dyke. Stiller gushes a bit when he talks about working with Rooney and Van Dyke, both in their 80s, but insists he wouldn't have wanted to come of age during their heyday.

"If that had happened, I don't think I would have had the opportunities I've had as an actor," he says. "It's almost like a different process in the post-'This is Spinal Tap' era. There's so much more improvisation. [Rooney and Van Dyke] are so professional, so they're delivering what's there on the page and making it work."

They also spent years playing different versions of the same character -- and recent memory suggests Stiller has done the same, reviving again and again the angst-ridden, exasperated schlub. But audiences have proved just as happy to receive the 41-year-old as a muscled-up bad guy in "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" (2004) or as a vainglorious male model in "Zoolander," the 2001 hit he wrote and directed.

So when Van Dyke refers to Stiller as a "reactor," he's half right. The laughs may come easiest when Stiller is being hit by a monkey, but they also come when he dives into the ludicrous, challenging Owen Wilson to a runway walk-off in "Zoolander" or turning Andre Agassi into a hair-dryer-wielding action hero, as he did on "The Ben Stiller Show." (Venture over to YouTube for clips of what may serve as the best sampling of Stiller's comedic range.)

But if the inflamed reactor is Stiller's most common posture, it may also be his most natural.

"I think for me, I'm more comfortable doing that than what, say, Jim Carrey does," he says. "The listening and allowing it to happen -- for me, it's like that's part of what makes it funny."

The inclination made shooting "Night" particularly challenging for Stiller, as most of the animals and exhibits that chase him around the museum were computer-generated, "so you're having to react to nothing."

"It was sort of lonely a lot of the time," he says.

He's lonely again now, but only because his wife, actress Christine Taylor, and their two young children have left the shoot in Mexico to return home. Life changed when they came along; the notorious workaholic began seeking a little more balance. Now the middle ground is bringing him back to TV: He's developing a sitcom for Taylor based on the idiosyncrasies of their marriage.

His wife, he insists, is fantastically funny. And him? Well, maybe it's just best not to ask.