Terrible waste of 2 hours

Rating: 1/10 (2 December 2004)

**could be spoilers**
National Treasure is like an even more pathetic version of The Da Vinci Code.
To start with, the movie is totally unoriginal. Ripping off a book like the Da Vinci Code was a poor choice, since the book was terrible. This movie is worse. The plot twists don't make much sense. As many other people have attested to there are "aha!" moments that seem to come out of no where. Deus Ex Machina is the only way Nicholas Cage and his band of misfits (including the enemy - guy willing to kill people over history) could figure out totally inane clues that make no sense. I don't think even the smartest history buff in the world could figure half of them out, and a few of them were ridiculously easy. Why would the founding fathers try to hide this treasure? This is a question that runs back and forth in your mind the whole time. The movie says "so the British wouldn't get it" but that makes little to no sense. The treasure wouldn't have helped the Brits win the war, so it was pretty confusing.
The acting was terrible, especially for Nicholas Cage who I've enjoyed in the past. Riley (wierd computer hacker guy) was entertaining and broke away from the monotony of the hackneyed, over played, subparr acting of the other characters. Jon Voight was also relatively entertaining, but that's because he's Jon Voight.
I will deter and admit that the movie was mildly entertaining. It's a waste of two hours, but if you have the time to kill and don't mind spending the cash you might consider seeing it, after seeing everything else out. Maybe wait to rent it, but for the price of a rental you could see it in the theater as a matinée. I'll give it 7/10 stars for entertainment, but 1/10 for quality, intelligence, worthwhileness, originality, acting, and everything else.