A solid (if unremarkable) adventure movie.

Rating: 6/10 (8 July 2010)

"Why can't they just say, 'go to this place, and here is the treasure; spend it wisely'?"
Let's start with the most important thing: that Riley character was extremely annoying. He's officially in my annoying character hall of fame. I don't know if be was supposed to be funny, or what, but the parts of the movie where he kept his mouth closed were my very favorites. Just had to put that out there.
As for the actual review, it's hardly a secret that I'm not much of a Nicholas Cage fan. His method of acting seems to be just playing the same character in nearly every movie of his that I've seen, from Gone in 60 Seconds to Ghost Rider. Needless to say, I didn't see National Treasure because of him. I did want to see more of Diane Kruger's movies, however, and the trailer made it seem like a more fun version of The Da Vinci Code, so I thought I'd give it a try. And that's basically what it turned out to be. It didn't change my opinion of Mr. Cage's acting skills, but I liked it.
National Treasure is a combination of a heist film, an adventure film, and a historical mystery, wrapped in a friendly, summer blockbuster wrapper. It moves along quite quickly, and stays fairly interesting (as well as slightly predictable) from beginning to end. Lots of conspiracy threads about the nation's founders and the Freemasons are drawn together in a way that would make Dan Brown proud, but it never suffers from the forced grasps at importance that the two Robert Langdon movies have unfortunately buckled under. If you're looking for a family-friendly adventure movie that gives history a fantastical spin, you could do a lot worse than National Treasure.