If you and your family have a tradition of going to see a movie on Christmas day and there are kids involved, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb is your best bet. Funny, friendly and fanciful, it has all the giggles and excitement young audiences could want, plus a good helping of amusement for the grownups. Your other family fare options are the musicals Into the Woods (a good choice if your family is into musicals) and Annie (a bad choice under any circumstances). Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb a lightweight option with a little something for everyone.

Although filmmakers claim this is the franchise finale, once the British Museum is involved, you can see there’s still room for more. That’s a good thing, too, as the six-year-old sitting next to me in the theater was sobbing uncontrollably as it appeared that Jedediah (Owen Wilson), Octavius (Steve Coogan), the monkey and the rest of the museum crew were about to meet a bad end. SPOILER ALERT: They don’t. There are two characters, however, who will never come back, and I admit seeing them one last time wrought a tear or two from my eyes: Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt and Mickey Rooney as Gus, alas, have seen their last days at the museum.

As with each episode in the franchise, there are some new characters this time around, partially thanks to an excursion to a museum in England, where Rebel Wilson is Ben Stiller’s night guard counterpart. She’s always a breath of fresh air, especially when she takes a peculiar interest in a new caveman who looks an awful lot like Larry. Dan Stevens also plays Sir Lancelot on a dubious quest. And there’s a subplot involving Larry’s son deciding between going to college and taking a year off to DJ in Spain that adds some moralizing adults might or might not approve of. You can tell that director Shawn Levy had a lot of love for this franchise, which has been a big hit with audiences, if not with critics. He made sure that if this is it, it ends on a sweet note.

Rated PG

1 Hour 30 Minutes