Cinematic equivalent of fool's gold

Rating: Null/10 (23 November 2004)

NATIONAL TREASURE (2004) ** Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Plummer. Overripe Bruckheimer melodramatic adventure popcorn flick with Cage (getting a tad long-in-the-tooth as a genre hero) as a globe-hopping cartographer of sorts who has in vein been attempting to locate the titular Maguffin that may have a link to a mysterious map on the Declaration of Independence that he is determined to liberate before one of his former colleagues, Bean, can get his duplicitous hands upon it for self-gaining wealth. A few good moments of hard-to-swallow, eye-rolling plot-holes aside the film is a creaker in its attempt to recapture the glories of the Indiana Jones films (its lacking the one true ingredient: heart) that leaves one wondering: Just what is really at stake here  besides two hours I'll never get back? (Dir: Jon Turteltaub)