All 4 Night At The Museum Movies, Ranked From Worst To Best

The best family movies of all time set a high bar for motion pictures that the whole household can enjoy together. One franchise that clearly owes a great debt to such titles ranging from "Jumanji" to "Zebra in the Kitchen" to "Home Alone" are the four Night at the Museum movies. These features, largely following Ben Stiller's Larry Daley working as a nightguard at the Museum of National History, vividly realized museum exhibits coming to life at night when nobody, except for Daley, is around.

The result was a saga that's proven to be a consistently massive box office juggernaut and certainly inspired more than a few family trips to local museums. Removing all the box office figures and potential childhood nostalgia, though, it's worth asking about the actual artistic merits of the Night at the Museum movies. Are they as captivating as the greatest museum exhibits or should they be gathering dust somewhere in a closet? Ranking the four "Night at the Museum" movies from worst to best, unfortunately, reveals that some of these installments are as lackluster as the weirdest children's movies from your parents' childhood.

On the other hand, the better outings in the Museum universe remind why this saga has become so popular and forever intertwined with the concept of a museum. Grab your flashlight and some gum for a demanding Easter Island head as we rank these four films.

Disney's mad rush to cram as much exclusive material onto Disney+ as possible between late 2019 and early 2023 ensured a graveyard of long-forgotten TV shows and movies on the platform. A "Turner & Hooch" TV show here. A "National Treasure" sequel show (with Harvey Keitel!) there. Don't forget a terrible "Enchanted" sequel that gravely wasted Amy Adams. Then, in December 2022, came another Disney+ movie exploiting the various brand names Disney acquired after completing its $71.3 billion acquisition of Fox. That title was "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again," which continued this familiar universe through an entirely animated adventure.

This time, Larry Daley (Zachary Levi) passes the flashlight baton to his son, Nick (Joshua Bassett), to take over as night guard. Wacky adventures ensue involving historical figure exhibits coming to life and previous "Museum" baddie Kahmunrah (Joseph Kamal) returning. Audience reception to this outing wasn't dismal, but there was also largely a dismissive air around the movie. Randomly returning to this universe after so long (with basically none of the original creative team intact) just made "Kahmunrah Rises Again" feel like a Disney+ title that happened to have a movie attached.

The slipshod animation and forgettable voice-over performances didn't help "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again" evade its sleepy reputation.

"Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb" technically qualifies as a movie that was a sad low end to a trilogy, though admittedly it's not an all time bad boondoggle. Its flaws are instead reminiscent of many subpar family films. particularly with its uninspired European setting echoing other kid-friendly sequels ("The Smurfs 2" and "Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties," namely) that shift their main characters across the pond when the idea well runs dry. Here, Larry Daley and his wax exhibit pals must travel to the British Museum to save the Tablet of Ahkmenrah and, by proxy, the ability for the museum artifacts to come to life.

One of the greatest disappointments of "Secret of the Tomb" is its lack of imagination in what British figures the main cast runs into. Fictional character Sir Lancelot (Dan Stevens) is the most prominent chronicled here. Where's Winston Churchill? William Shakespeare? Fanny Eaton? This lack of imagination exemplifies the tired storytelling and comedic beats present in "Secret of the Tomb." Supporting players like Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, and Steve Coogan remain game for anything, while Stevens also equips himself well to the slapstick-driven silliness.

Endearing performances, though, can't make up for the punchlines that stumble and its distractingly rudimentary aesthetic. In other words, it's not the ideal wrap-up the Night at the Museum trilogy deserved.

From 2003's "Cheaper by the Dozen" to 2024's "Deadpool and Wolverine," director Shawn Levy must be doing something right given how many hit crowdpleasers he's helmed over the years. Unfortunately, his work suffers from feeling too workmanlike. Great initial concepts and fitfully terrific scenes factor into Levy's movies, yet his execution always leaves a lot on the table. This, unfortunately, is apparent in 2006's "Night at the Museum." 

Considered one of Ben Stiller's best movies, "Night at the Museum" is a perfectly pleasant piece of family entertainment that gets a lot of mileage out of charming performances from the likes of Robin Williams and Dick van Dyke. Stiller makes for a solid straight man to balance all the wacky museum exhibits coming to life around him. Generally speaking, there's fun to be had here. Unfortunately, the plot's too straightforward for something constantly emphasizing whimsical magic. Anything can happen in this museum, except for plot beats you haven't seen a million times before. Additionally, attempts at pathos come off as ham-fisted due to flat characters, while extended scenes of babbling improvised dialogue doesn't really click. 

As a piece of family entertainment, "Night at the Museum" certainly isn't the worst title out there amongst its mid-2000s contemporaries. Still, Shawn Levy's surface-level approach robs "Museum" of becoming something special.

The worst movies and shows that were products of the 2007-2008 Writer's Guild of America strike all show the importance of a good script. "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" was also impacted by this strike, which both postponed planned rewrites and caused its original December 2008 release date to get traded out for a May 2009 launchpad. The final version feels held together by Scotch tape and a dream. Characters bumble around from one location to another, guided more by which wacky figures the filmmakers want to explore next rather than in-universe logic. 

The supposedly mighty power of baddie Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria) is never really potent thanks to the screenplay's sloppy nature. Luckily, "Battle of the Smithsonian" trades in narrative cohesion for letting its talented comedic cast inhabit outsized personas. That turns out to be a winning recipe for an entertaining film. Whether it's Bill Hader as George Armstrong Custer, Keith Powell and Craig Robinson as Tuskegee Airmen ("The Tuskegee Airmen are on the march!"), Hank Azaria's hysterical Kahmunrah, or especially Amy Adams radiating confident pluck as Amelia Earhart, "Smithsonian" delivers a barrage of scene-stealing turns.

Keeping the laughs and lively performances coming at a steady clip makes "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" easily the best of the franchise. Despite its strike-induced storytelling faults, this installment delivers oodles of fun and creative comedic performances.