Let's just stop with the kiddie orientated Disney franchises, shall we?

Rating: 4/10 (5 June 2008)

They tagline for this film could've been 'National Treasure 2  This time it's personal' considering it revolves around the Gates family named being accused of a dark history. But then again, they must've realised 'National Treasure 2  This time it's personal' just sounds silly. Wait a minute, something to do with a National Treasure film deemed 'too silly'? Well, I never. Truth is, National Treasure: Book of Secrets is so bad that with about twenty minutes to go you just have to accept the garbage being churned out to you and hope it will all soon be over. The film isn't painful in the sense there is nothing to read into nor is it a disaster in the sense the film fails from scene one and doesn't let up alá Batman & Robin or Thunderbirds but it still grates and grates in its own way.
In fact with the National Treasure films, I am quickly developing another natural hatred of a Disney franchise; a hatred that began in the Summer of 2006 when I saw the first Pirates of the Caribbean film and quickly cottoned onto the masses of followers who just seem too brainwashed by the actors, pacing and 'fun' the films offer to even notice how crap it was. Then there was this, National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Nicolas Cage is back as Ben Gates but as I said, this time it's personal because his family name has been shamed and accused as a conspirer to President Lincoln's death. His adventure to clear the name and to find the truth will see him travel to the Oval Office in the White House; the Queen's desk in Buckingham Palace and it will see him meet and greet the current American President in search for what separates fact from fiction. I can only guess that these scenes are supposed to act as some sort of dramatic series of events in location's we very rarely see in films. I can say that not only are they unspectacular but they are also contrived and anticlimactic  you mean to tell me that in the Queen of England's desk there was a secret code hidden all this time? What about the President's desk? There was something in there the entire time and nobody found it? Suspending disbelief has never been so necessary.
But along this time to help him is his old buddy Riley (Bartha) and his girlfriend Abigail (Kruger); both characters serve their silly purpose as they did in the first film. Riley is un-funny comic relief (people keep mistaking him for Gates and he cannot sell his book. Also, his car is towed  how hilarious) and Abigail is the pretty to look at, innocent, 'Eurotrash' girl who does what she's supposed to do and says what she's supposed to say while kissing and 'exposing' herself at timed intervals when she has to. But it's not just these two that are along for the ride because this time, Ben has brought the folks. John Voight is back as the father in an attempt to try and resurrect a career that had flagged since Mission: Impossible and Helen Mirren is the Brit typically cast as the intellectual of the bunch, playing Ben's mother. A big problem with these characters is that they do not exist to be developed; they exist for mere comic relief that is never funny. Emily (Mirren) and Patrick's (Voight) bickering runs parallel with Ben and Abigail's falling out and it is the common-denominator in treasure hunting that threatens to bring them all back together again as a happy family.
So the adventure sees them propelled through Paris complete with funny looking French policemen who show up on bicycles (yes, proper push bikes) and act in an oblivious manner; it sees them propelled to London during which I actually took offence to Cage's impression of an Englishman as he rolls out the accent and the clichés before outsmarting the British police who are equally inept. The journey will see them visit a White House ball during which Gates will succeed in a ludicrous plan to get the President in a location one-on-one before the film finally has the gang getting very wet in an underground cavern accessible only by randomly pouring water on the rocks outside.
The film is a failure with its narrative that is loose and uneven and its characters that exist to meekly attempt to make us laugh. An example of the loose plotting is evident in the element of the book. It is a book that only the president knows of and yet the idea to look for this book is spawned from Riley's novel. How does Riley know of the book in the first place if it's only passed on from President to President? The domestic situation between Ben's parents is silly and unneeded and the payoff to their relationship is equally anti-climatic. Ed Harris lacks any sort of charisma or menace to play a good villain in this film and his scenes just while away into acts of nothingness. The films wants to think that Abigail kissing the white house official in the Oval Office just as Ben finds what he needs is 'funny' and the characters in general rely too much on technology to see them home; scenes like the button that 'pops the trunk' and the overuse of computers and phones are examples. The product placement of Fullers London Pride, Mercedes Benz and especially Apple Computers is shameful as is the feeling you'll get at the end of the film when you realise you just sat through it.