"National Treasure: Book of Secrets" is a lot of hush hush half-witted fluff!

Rating: 3/10 (25 December 2007)

The first "National Treasure" (2004) movie qualified as a predictable potboiler that was fast, furious, frivolous fun. The sequel "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" is just plain frivolous. Nicolas Cage heads up a seasoned cast, including Jon Voight, Ed Harris, Helen Mirren, Bruce Greenwood, and Harvey Keitel, that looks like they had a blast. If watching other folks have a heck of a lot of fun on the big-screen turns you on, then "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" will delight you. Unfortunately, "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" lacks virtually everything that good action-adventure movies boast. You won't find many suspenseful scenes that are realistic enough to make you squirm at the edge of your seat. Everything here resembles a carefully contrived amusement park thrill ride. When all is said and done, the heroes, villains, and sidekicks engage in an endless game of musical chairs. In fact, the entire movie looks like an episode taken from producer Jerry Bruckheimer's CBS-TV series "The Amazing Race." Basically, the principals scramble breathlessly across Europe, on a harebrained scavenger hunt for clues that bring them into contact with several famous places or high-ranking people, such as the President of the United States. Moreover, you know that nobody is going to get die or get seriously hurt, except perhaps the dastardly devious villain. Worse, you know a movie like "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" is second-rate when the cartoon shown before it is more amusing than anything in this rated PG, 130 action-adventure comedy of errors. Right, the best thing about "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" is the Walt Disney Studios' cartoon about Goofy and his arduous antics to assemble a high-definition television set within the confines of his modest home.
"National Treasure: Book of Secrets" should have been subtitled "Books of Secrets." Villainous Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris of "Apollo 13") uses a missing page from presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth's diary to implicate an ancestor of Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage of "Next") and his father Patrick Gates (Jon Voight of "Heat") as the mastermind behind the Lincoln's assassination. Naturally, our overgrown Hardy Boys heroes don't take kindly to Wilkinson's smear tactics. They embark on a race for clues that will clear their ancestor of this accusation. Some audiences, especially around these parts, may take offense at the way that "National Treasure" director Jon Turteltaub and scribes Cormac & Marianne Wibberley, try to rekindle the flames of Southern hatred with a plot gimmick that involves a secret Confederate society. Along the way, Ben breaks into restricted parts of Buckingham Palace with his estranged archivist girlfriend Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger of the first "National Treasure") and their computer savvy, comic-relief sidekick Riley Poole (Justin Bartha of "Failure to Launch") so that they can ransack antique desks and then run rings around British security personnel. At another point, Ben and company make monkeys out of the U.S. Secret Service when our protagonist kidnaps the President (Bruce Greenwood, who played JFK in the Kevin Costner thriller "Thirteen Days") during a ceremony at George Washington's estate at Mount Vernon. Ben has to separate the President from his bodyguards long enough to learn the whereabouts of the Chief Executive's Book of Secrets. This apocryphal reference book about nation's paranoid secrets is concealed in the Library of Congress. Eventually, the trail takes Ben and company to the Black Hills of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore. Along the way, Ben's father Patrick has to reconcile with Ben's mother, his ex-wife, Emily Appleton (Helen Mirren of "Prime Suspect") who helps them decipher obscure Native American symbols. These reconciliations between Ben and Abigail as well as Patrick and Emily never generate much mirth.
"National Treasure: Book of Secrets" isn't half as good as its predecessor. Moreover, some of its scenes have been cloned from other recent movies. The backwards car chase in London looks suspiciously like the backwards car chase from the slightly better but just as objectionable The Da Vinci Code." The writers took the dialogue almost word-for-word about those paranoid national secrets straight from another Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster, "The Rock" (1996) with Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage. The biggest set-piece occurs at the climax of the action with our heroes, heroine, sidekick, and villain atop an implausible giant spinning waffle iron contraption that looks like something out of the 1980 "Flash Gordon" extravaganza. What few historic facts and stories that come up in the plot could be found in the trivia section of any college textbooks, especially the phrase about mud. Altogether, if you're looking for lightweight, disposable fare to forget about the moment you hit the exit door, "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" is superb. The first "National Treasure" movie coined over $347 million worldwide so it was inevitable that Bruckheimer would produce another installment.