A National Treasure Found!

The Blot just got back from seeing National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and you know what? It was really quite good. So good even Nic Cage’s bad acting couldn’t ruin the film for me. Now I loved the first National Treasure and both it and the sequel did well at the box office, but there’s just something about a Nicolas Cage movie that makes me uneasy. Maybe it’s the fact that 8 of his past 10 movies (Next, The Wicker Man, World Trade Center, The Weather Man, Lord of War and Matchstick Men) haven’t interested me in the least and most did not do well at the box office. The only non-National Treasure Nicolas Cage movie I even remotely wanted to see was Ghost Rider, and that was only because it was based on a comic book. But I liked the first National Treasure so much and felt the role of Benjamin Franklin Gates suited Cage so well that I knew I needed to see the sequel.

Thankfully I wasn’t disappointed. Obviously as with any Disney movie there were some cheesy, unneeded moments, but overall it was everything you would want in a holiday adventure movie….it had great action scenes, an entertaining comedic sidekick (Justin Bartha reprising his role as Riley Poole), an on again/off again romance with Diane Kruger reprising her role as Abigail Chase and the requisite bad guy played by villain extraordinaire Ed Harris (Pollock, Stepmom, A History of Violence).

Probably the worst part of the movie was the Disney cartoon short How to Hook Up Your Home Theater starring Goofy showed before National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I have no idea why they felt the need to include thi,s but it was dreadfully awful and unnecessary. If I felt the need to watch a cartoon of Goofy clumsily putting together a home theater in the style of an old school Disney short I’d turn on the Disney Channel more often…that is if the Disney Channel ever showed those old Disney cartoons anymore instead of High School Musical 1 & 2 over and over again. But I digress…anyway, if you’re in the mood for some mindless fun this holiday weekend I recommend checking out National Treasure: Book of Secrets and you might even learn some fictitious history!