Book of Jokes

Rating: 2/10 (2 January 2008)

This movie was pathetic. I'm glad I only used my Christmas gift cards to see it and not my own money. Let me set the stage for you: The theater was pretty packed for a New Year's day 8:00 p.m. showing. The audience was in a good mood to start. I could feel the energy with the laughter coming from the Goofy cartoon that preceded this dreck of a film. The group synergy was great and it lasted until about half-way through the film. Once we all realized what a complete waste of time and money this movie was, we immediately stopped laughing at Justin Bartha's quips and started laughing at Diane Kruger's acting... which was far more humorous. Seriously, the only thing she was good for was that scene in the oval office where she was wearing that skimpy little dress. The movie was full of lousy punch-lines delivered by an even lousier combined effort from some A-list actors. Based on the first National Treasure movie, I didn't expect this to be a masterpiece in cinematic eloquence, but I did expect the likes of Voight, Mirren, Keitel and Harris to give a little more than this. Harris' performance was particularly awful mainly because of the complexity of the way his character was written. First, he's a shrewd southern business man who wants nothing more than to find this city of gold. Then, he turns into somewhat of a hero and sacrifices himself. WTF?!? Then he says "All I wanted to do was find the city and help you to clear your name." That's ALL HE WANTED?!? Again, WTF?!? This coming from the same character who said no more than two scenes prior "Well, if I'm not going last then I might as well go first," when it came to a perilous situation. Uhhh, ookkaaayyyy. Mirren's performance wasn't all that bad. Her character was poorly introduced and her first scene when arguing with Voight's character was pretty hard to swallow. Keitel's performance was okay as well, but I think that is only because he didn't have enough time on screen for the writers to screw it up too. Honestly, the movie as a whole was not worth the time. It was so far fetched that it really just became incredibly unbelievable in every way. Government agencies infiltrated at the ease of entering a Wal-Mart, International government Web sites hacked like they were a link from Google. The Secret Service as inept as a group of security guards at a Foghat concert. This was just lame. Poorly written, poorly acted and a poor choice on my behalf. Should've known better.