Cons: shallow, derivative, diminutive, and lacking much in terms of dynamics
The Bottom Line: Middle-of-the-roaders (what I call the Disney/Hallmark crowd) will have a good time. Those expecting something sharper and hipper will be disappointed.
Watching this film, I couldn't help but remember another film, Ivan Reitman's light comedy, Twins, though for reasons I'm sure the filmmakers never anticipated.
Twins was about two brothers, conceived of in a Frankensteinian experiment, but separated at birth. One became Arnold Schwarzenegger - tall, good-looking and self-confident. The other became Danny Devito.
This film is definitely the Danny Devito. It has at least a half-dozen fathers, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Romancing the Stone and Tomb Raider. It's not clear how many of those fathers would openly admit paternity. National Treasure is the kind of film that gets dumped on an orphanage - and has to scrap to survive.
The plot is both familiar and new. Nicholas Cage plays an Indiana-Jones-like academic who isn't afraid to roll up his sleeves. He comes from a line of treasure chasers, though a feud has opened up between his grandfather and his father over the wisdom of chasing the long-lost treasures of colonial Masons whose payoff for founding the world's premiere democracy was a huge haul, too big to be entrusted to any one man. (Paging Frodo. Is there a hobbit in the house?)
Like Indy - and Lara - Cage doesn't get too far into the film before he is double-crossed by his soon-to-be arch-nemesis, who is only along for the bucks. When it turns out the treasure map they seek is on the back of the Declaration of Independence, Cage decides to steal it before his nemesis does - not for the treasure, but to safeguard that treasure (and the Declaration) from the dirty, grubby hands of the "bad guys."
The film requires a suitable sidekick. The first two Raiders films made this a love interest. Tomb Raider allowed for a "Q"-like subordinate. National Treasure splits the difference. One of the film's pieces of trailer candy involves Cage trying to sell his theory to a skeptical Smithsonian curator whose reaction goes all the way back to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, when Kirk had to explain to a blonde of our time why he needed a humpback whale.
Jerry Bruckheimer has had a lot of mixed luck the last few years. In an industry that splashes more light on directors than producers, he has earned a solid reputation for delivering high-octane action-adventure. Films like Top Gun, Crimson Tide, The Rock, Con Air, and Pirates of the Caribbean speak for themselves.
On the other hand, when trying to break genre and settle into less kinetic material, Bruckheimer has had a tougher time. Until 9/11, Pearl Harbor was considered one of the major flops of 2001. Black Hawk Down, which garnered critical praise, was panned by many as too long and boring. Nobody went to see Veronica Guerrin. King Arthur did better but as a match between action and history, it proved little better than the marriages of Henry VIII.
Many of the problems in National Treasure stem from its diminutive stature. Raiders harkened back to a glorious time (the WWII generation) and had bigger villains (nobody gets bigger than the Nazis). Its object of desire was nothing less than the Ark of the Covenant, for which the Declaration of Independence, even on its best day, simply pales in comparison.
The plot, admittedly, is no less absurd than the conspiracy theory driving either Raiders or Tomb Raider. Lots of action films are held together by shoe-string plots, but only because the audience knows it's paying for action. Here, the mumbo jumbo about Masons may be on a par with the superstitions of the Nazis or the legend of the Illuminati, but National Treasure simply doesn't have enough action to merit this level of absurdity.
What we get is a series of Danny Devito-sized payoffs. The film's caper is written small. Watching Cage spout on about history - as if he were Matt Damon ripping into a Harvard grad student or Dustin Hoffman ranting about Judge Wapner and baseball stats - is simply no substitute for watching Indy run from an oversized bowling ball or crack his whip at a bad guy.
Nor is the film quite as exotic as its predecessors. Raiders took us to ancient Egypt. Tomb Raider took us everywhere else. Romancing the Stone sent us down a muddy slip and slide, face first into the open-wide legs of Kathleen Turner. By contrast, National Treasure takes us to D.C. - and presumably under it. There's an early scene in the arctic but nothing we hadn't seen somewhere else.
And yet, this film is no Gigli. It lacks the zaniness of Pirates of the Caribbean, but people all around me were laughing happily. All the relationships are familiar and predictable but that doesn't make them unwatchable. It's genuinely fun to watch Cage navigate between his father, his sidekick and the near-librarian he has just picked up.
This film's strengths and weaknesses are bound together in a strategy of providing the public with something adventurous without being threatening, safe without being sappy, pirate-lite and patriotic, edutaining without being either too serious or too flippant.
The film was never intelligent enough, emotional enough or consistent enough to demand my affection. By the same token, it scrapped its way through some mediocre, cliche-ridden material to deliver something heads and shoulders above the "flops" of the year, including Gigli, Cat Woman, and The Alamo.
I think the active words here are "safe, patriotic, middle of the road, and earnest." In spite of its flaws, National Treasure tries to satisfy its audience. For that reason, Red State people will probably love this film - or at least like it a lot. Blue State people will probably fall out of their seats with boredom.
Action Thriller DVD - Although this rousing adventure film takes place in the present and sports any number of up-to-the-minute gadgets and gimmicks, ...More at Barnes and Noble
Action Thriller DVD - Although this rousing adventure film takes place in the present and sports any number of up-to-the-minute gadgets and gimmicks, ...More at Barnes and Noble
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.