Night at the Museum

Night at the Museum opened on December 22, 2006, directed by Shawn Levy and based on a 1993 children's book by Milan Trenc. The premise was simple enough to pitch in a sentence: Larry Daley (Ben Stiller), a divorced dad who can't catch a break, takes the night-shift security job at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where an Egyptian artifact brings every exhibit to life after closing time. What follows is controlled chaos: Robin Williams as an exuberant Theodore Roosevelt, Owen Wilson as Jedediah the miniature cowboy, and Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney as scheming old guards who know more than they let on.

The film grossed $574.5 million worldwide — and then something stranger happened: the real museum felt it. Between December 22, 2006 and January 7, 2007, the American Museum of Natural History drew roughly 50,000 more visitors than the same stretch the year before, a jump museum officials put at about 20% and credited to the movie. A family comedy had become an accidental commercial for looking at dinosaur bones.

Sequels followed — Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and Secret of the Tomb (2014) — but the first film is the one that lives in memory, a fixture of DVD-era family movie nights and basic-cable holiday afternoons.