Umm ...How Did Finding The Treasure Clear The Gates Family Name?

Rating: 3/10 (6 July 2008)

I admit that watching the first NATIONAL TREASURE movie was a guilty pleasure, but here ends my enjoyment of anything National or Treasure. Sequels are tough to pull off (can anyone say "INDIANA JONES 4?") and one has to wonder why Hollywood continues to pump them out even when the script fails on almost every level ...and such was the case with National Treasure 2.
If anyone can tell me how finding this new treasure helped solve the Gates family's problem related to their relatives' association with the Lincoln assassination, please let me know. Because that was what this film was all about, right? I mean, we start off with Thomas Gates (Joel Gretsch, THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE) being approached by the men who set up President Lincoln's assassination, who in turn kill Thomas for refusing to give up the secrets to an ancient language in a document they have. We then move on to the current day where this document comes to the attention of the Gates family by the sinister Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris) who presents his evidence that Thomas Gates was the mastermind behind Lincoln's death. So Ben Gates (Nicholas Cage, GHOST RIDER), his father Patrick (Jon Voight, TRANSFORMERS), Ben's estranged wife Abigail (Diane Kruger) and Ben's trusty friend and sidekick Riley (Justin Bartha, FAILURE TO LAUNCH) head out to clear the family name by finding the lost treasure of pre-America. But how, exactly, this will clean-up their family name isn't clear ...or even explained. A pretty big hole in the story's central plot.
This plot hole combined with everything we've already seen in the previous NATIONAL TREASURE film makes this second installment tedious and full of non-surprises.
The only positive spin the film can claim is Justin Bartha's Riley character who infuses almost all of the comedy by having a monopoly on the best lines ("Ben, if it were you trying to convince me, you'd have less evidence and I'd already believe you by now.").
But that's it. Even the dastardly character Mitch Wilkinson (Harris) doesn't stay dastardly; only moments before he turns "good" he was holding a knife to Ben's mother's neck (Helen Mirren, THE QUEEN), making his character completely unbelievable now. Gah! National Treasure 2 is a true disaster, with such poor characterization and plotting that it makes the entire film feel like it's laced with fool's gold with nary a piece of treasure in sight.