2004's National Treasure didn't leave a big impression on me. In fact, I had completely forgotten about it until posters started showing up for the film's sequel, Book of Secrets, at my local theater. I remember the first movie involved a lot of Nicolas Cage solving centuries-old riddles and puzzles in a matter of seconds. The sequel contains more of the same, and does not exactly fill me with the desire to refresh my memory on the events of the first movie. National Treasure: Book of Secrets is as ludicrous and as silly of a Hollywood blockbuster as they come. I know, it's supposed to be so, but even when I tried to put myself in the proper mood and enjoy it as the popcorn entertainment it wants to be, it still didn't work for me. This is an obnoxious and bloated spectacle where people continuously scream at each other while stumbling upon one clue after another through circumstances so contrived and coincidental, I suspect the credited screenwriters had a hard time typing this stuff down into their word processor with a straight face.

Our returning treasure-hunting hero, Ben Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage), has just recently discovered that one of his family ancestors may have had a hand in the assassination of President Lincoln. A man named Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris) presents a missing page from the diary of John Wilkes Booth, which lists a member of the Gates family as one of the co-conspirators. Not wanting the family name to be tarnished, Ben gathers up his father Patrick (Jon Voight), his ex-girlfriend Abigail (Diane Kruger), and wise-cracking sidekick Riley (Justin Bartha) to search out a series of clues that can lead them to the fabled location of the Lost City of Gold. How does this clear the Gates family name? Your guess is as good as mine. They examine the missing page, discover it holds a hidden treasure map, and off they go looking for the Lost City. Their search will force Ben and his friends to look for clues in the Statue of Liberty, Buckingham Palace, and even the White House, where Ben will lure the President of the United States (Bruce Greenwood) away from his own birthday party to go treasure hunting with him through some secret underground caves. And if that doesn't sound ludicrous enough, wait till they discover the inside of Mount Rushmore is a complex series of caves and traps that looks like something out of Indiana Jones or The Goonies.

Okay, obviously National Treasure: Book of Secrets is intended to be check your brain at the door entertainment. But, I just can't check as much of my brain that this movie asks me to in order for this thing to work. Look past the fact that Ben and his friends have the unique ability to solve riddles and mysteries that have baffled mankind for centuries in less than 30 seconds. Look past the fact that Ben can crash the President's birthday party and "steal" the President with minimal effort, all without having the entire nation's armed forces shoot him on sight. Look past the fact that we're informed early on that Ben and his ex-girlfriend, Abigail, are no longer on speaking terms, yet when he breaks into her house to get something he needs for his search, she immediately agrees to help him without a second thought, and the couple seem to completely forget that they're supposed to hate each other. Look past all that, and you have a great big void of nothing. The screenplay is built upon a shaky foundation of coincidences, plot holes, unexplained events, and situations so contrived you almost feel insulted that the filmmakers are asking you to accept them. The characters that we're supposed to root for are an insufferable band of screaming idiots who are either screaming at each other, screaming out plot points, or screaming dialogue like "Let's go!" or "We don't have time!" It doesn't help matters that Ben is joined on his quest by his father and mother (Helen Mirren), who spend most of their time together (you guessed it) screaming and arguing with each other. The way the cast keeps on screaming their lines, you'd think they were being paid by the decibel.

In order for popcorn entertainment like this to work, we need to not only identify with the characters, but there also has to be a sense of fun and danger throughout. National Treasure can't seem to muster the least bit of excitement or danger, as aside from a car chase early on and the extended sequence inside Mount Rushmore, the characters rarely find themselves in life threatening situations. They hop to different locations around the world, solve a puzzle, and then move onto the next one. The movie tries to create tension by having Mitch and his band of goons following Ben around and tracing his phone calls, but this goes nowhere, as Mitch doesn't turn out to be quite as evil as initially believed, and his hired goons completely disappear without any explanation eventually. Even silly movies need to make some form of sense, but there are no rules or structure. It takes us by the arm, and leads us head-first through an increasingly preposterous globe-trotting adventure, never stopping to explain itself. Yeah, the exotic locations are sometimes neat, and some the puzzles are interesting, but it's all just fluff to distract us from the fact that there's nothing going on underneath. Not even the film's subtitle makes much sense when you think about it, as the Book of Secrets is nothing more than a plot device that is brought up in one sequence, then never seen or mentioned again.
This is the kind of holiday entertainment that families go to when they don't care what they watch, just as long as there's a lot of flash and explosions to entertain them. National Treasure: Book of Secrets is completely bankrupt in terms of imagination and storytelling. It's one part Da Vinci Code, two parts Indiana Jones, three parts Tomb Raider, and all nonsense. I don't ask for all movies to make sense, I just want to be entertained. This movie can't even fulfill that most basic necessity. Watching the movie, I could obviously see that it was expensive to make. But all I kept on thinking to myself is that I was watching millions of dollars being burned right there on the screen for no reason.

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