National Treasure (Widescreen Edition)
There's a pretty good gimmick with these DVD extras aimed squarely at the pre-teen/early teen audience that ate up this film. Each of the extras (a standard making-of featurette, an alternate ending, and an interesting deleted scene) is followed by a clue afterwards. Decipher the clues and unlock the next set of extras: a nice bit on real treasure hunters, an awful piece on the Knights Templar, and one gem for kids: "Riley Poole's Decode this!" Actor Justin Bartha reprises his role (Nic Cage's techno-sidekick) and lectures a bit on the cooler side of language history and code-breaking with a few simple interactive games. If you get through it all, you unlock a hidden feature, a trivia track. Thankfully, those who do not want to go on the treasure hunt can access these features by reading the printed insert. Also thankfully, director Jon Turteltaub's enthusiasm always makes DVD extras more watchable than most.--Doug Thomas