National Treasure
I had a five-year-old sporadically watching this with me (in between eating things found on the floor/throwing toy cars around the room/swinging a broom around whilst making light-sabre noises) who it seems has just learnt how to play the Why game. Annoying at best, this game really comes into its own during a movie, and for a while things went as such:
“Uncy Cliff, why did the man shoot at the other man?”
Um, he was mad at him.
“Why was he mad?”
The man wasn’t going to let him steal something.
“What was he going to steal?”
The Declaration of Independence.
“What’s that?”
A piece of paper that’s very valuable and important.
“Why?”
It just is.
“Why?”
I don’t know.
“Why does the man want to steal it?”
*Sigh* (breath) Look - there’s supposed to be an invisible map on the back that was drawn by the United States of America’s founding fathers that can only be read with these special glasses that they made that are hidden somewhere else and when you get them and put them on and decipher the map’s clues it leads you to a whole stack of rare treasure that for some reason Benjamin Franklin and his buddies had decided to protect from falling into the wrong hands by hiding it from the entire world and then creating this elaborate series of clues that will one day lead Nicolas Cage to discover its whereabouts. Got it?
“Oh. Why?”
I have no fucking idea. Go play outside.
“But it’s night time.”
It’s funny how sometimes you just come to accept some films as pieces of crap and try to just go along for the ride. I was actually partially enjoying having a cruisy brain-dead Sunday evening in front of the tele with this until my nephew made me realise exactly how stupid this film was. Which shouldn’t really be a surprise considering this film only exists because of one very rich and deviously clever man and his massively overrated airport novel. Every frame of this film aches to be The Da Vinci Code, or at least its little brother, who rather than jet-setting all over Europe is happy to stay home and investigate more local mysteries. A philanthropic history-loving wannabe-explorer following and deciphering a series of elaborate clues (I say elaborate but I mean fucking stupid) that date back centuries, involving such mysterious associations as The Knights Templars and The Freemasons – boy, what a mystery! – but it kinda sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Lacking the scope, wit and innovation of the other older sibling it desperately craves to be, Indiana Jones, National Treasure actually comes off more like The Goonies with grown-ups, which is definitely not as cool as it may sound, no matter how big a Truffle Shuffle fan you may be.
Poor Sean Bean sadly cements his career typecast here – not just as a bad guy, but as another good guy turned bad (see Goldeneye, Fellowship Of The Ring, etc.), while veteran John Voight produces what is easily the worst performance of his life. At least Cage and co. all seem happy enough investing in the goofiness of it all with suitable aplomb, but Voight acts so bizarre it’s almost like someone who has never seen a play or a film doing a bad parody of what they think acting is. Has he had a stroke I haven’t heard about? Or perhaps was he just confused because the film pitches itself as an action/thriller film when really it’s just a well-dressed Disney family flick?
Like Dan Brown’s trashily addictive pulp read, National Treasure moves at a pace designed not to give you a chance to take a breath, nor a quiet moment to contemplate just how nonsensical and ridiculous it all is. While they may have tried to mirror that book’s palpable sense of adventure, they didn’t invest nearly enough thought into why it has become a multi-squillion-selling title – its dubious use and abuse of myth and history.
Sure, the film craps on and on about the founding of the nation, Nic Cage’s character almost sheds a tear when thinking about the Declaration of Independence, and the trail to the treasure takes the adventurers to half the bloody tourist landmarks in the United States, but it all means jack when the treasure itself is revealed to be…treasure. Just plain old storybook treasure. Like gold, and coins, and generic old looking things. Nothing significant about it in the least. Yawn. I was hoping it would be George Washinton’s cryogenically frozen head, or the real Declaration of Independence that maybe doesn’t have that ‘right to bear arms’ part that American hicks like to hide behind every time a four-year-old accidentally shoots himself dead…or, er, something. But plain treasure? Rob a fucking bank or a museum you twats, it’s gotta be much less friggin work.
Oh, and if you are interested, my nephew’s review was a glaringly repetitive chorus of “Can we watch The ‘Formeerrrsss (Transformers)???” throughout the whole second half of the film. I’m so gosh darn proud of him. He’ll make a fine reviewer one day.