Lock this 'treasure' up in a vault and bury that vault so far down it reaches the core of the Earth and melts.

Rating: 4/10 (18 May 2008)

There is a line in The 51st State (Formula 51 to Americans) where one character says to the other about a certain meal: "Fish and chips mate, national dish" to which someone else replies "More like a national disaster" before tossing it out of the window. This is the sort of line you might copy when talking to someone about this film: 'Entertainment, fun and CGI = National Treasure' to which anyone else might reply 'More like a national disaster'. "It's not like Pirates, is it?" says Ian Howe, played by Sean Bean in a 'nod' to Disney's other overblown, underdone live action romp Pirates of the Caribbean. Well actually, yes it's a lot like Pirates of the Caribbean and that link should be enough to deter anybody over the age (or should that be IQ?) of eighteen as far away from this film as possible.
The fact of the matter is; if you crammed in any more formula, clichés or nasty representations into National Treasure then it would probably explode in a bright display of British villains, hard bodied blondes and one-liners. But that's exactly what we get here and at a time when the big budgeted action adventure film is wracking in more money than you might earn for Internet shares that rose throughout the 1980s. There was a time when these films did not exist; there was a time when you did not need to go into a film with that nasty sensation at the back of your mind: 'Oh, I do hope this won't be another crap entry in the genre'. Sometimes you get lucky but the sway is overwhelming and National Treasure is one of those that catches you out.
The film plays out more like an scenario closely resembling 'The Da Vinci Code for kids' than it does an all round, children and adults orientated action adventure film. There are no thrills, there are no spills; there is no horror or jumps or violence and there are no interesting characters; merely names and appearances written down on paper with the actors/actresses' names accompanying them on the document. National Treasure is a passage  it's a passage of scenes with no real logic nor fun, just complicated and uninteresting scenarios that exist so that 'bums-on-seats' specialist Nicolas Cage can come along and solve them.
In fact the film is so bad when I think about it that it comes close to parodying itself. Nearer the end, one character states "A jump like that could kill a man" as Ben Gates (Played by Cage) leaps off a boat or a marina (I forget) and into the water from a great height. No, a jump like that will not kill a man  not in this genre. This reference in alerting the audience that, in the real world the jump would kill a man, is second perhaps only to Jaws: The Revenge when it comes to conflicting the film's actual loyalties. The Jaws sequel scene in question is when a character states 'sharks cannot kill humans in the goal for revenge' thus contradicting the film's entire premise so for National Treasure to be on par with this sort of logic only backs up my idea that the film is really poor.
But National Treasure is not just stupid, it is offensive. Nicholas Cage is a name and a face and one that will bring in the audiences which means more money for Disney. German pretty-girl Diane Kurger plays Abigail Chase who is, believe it or not, a doctor. There is a hilariously bad scene early on when Gates and his sidekick walk into her office and exclaim their surprise at the doctor being a woman  no surprises from me. As an educated doctor who collects coins, Abigail Chase exists only in this film as a watered down love interest; a love interest that is only made apparent for the very last scene when a dumb joke is cracked to do with lovemaking. Although there is another reason the good doctor is a woman in this film and it is so that the character's cleavage is given a few instances of screen time. I have identified this as a tactic so that when the main characters are talking and going over the next plot points, the teenagers in the audience can ignore these particular 'boring' scenes full of dialogue and focus on the some necessary distractions  how sad. And they call this a film.
The bad guys exist in this film's world to merely spread menace and act all tough in an attempt to try and make an atmosphere. They fail because, guess what; they're European  how original. Sean Bean plays the bad guy, a British villain and what about his cronies? They're Russian  hilarious. It makes you beg for another Cold War so that these stupid ideas of the 'evil' British and Russians working against the innocent, fun, 'all for a good cause' Americans would go away. The same thing happened in Cage's 2007 film 'Next' in which the villains were German and French. Then there is Riley Poole (Bartha) who exists only to inspire dumb laughs at dumb times (which is practically every frame of the film) and to crack one-liners with Cage every now and again. How sad. And so, National Treasure soon falls into its rut of cause and effect scenes about something that affects Americans more than it does me; relying on the fact we must trust these caricatures and what they say is correct to carry us through. Watch out for my favourite part of the film: the gang have just escaped the museum and randomly, Cage grabs Kruger; shakes her vigorously and yells: "Are you hungry!?"  Hilarious.