National
Treasure
I remember seeing the commercials for the movie National
Treasure and turning to my
wife to say—“This
movie is either going to be really good, or awfully lame”.
I am very glad I didn’t pay full cinema price to see this
thing.
I don’t know who got it into their heads that Nicholas Cage was the right
actor to lead the cast in a movie like this, but for some reason somebody
said
“Hey—Nicholas Cage! Cool!” and gave him the lead
role. To be quite honest, almost any other actor could have taken this role and
made it more believable. Matthew Broderick (fer cryin' out loud) would have been a more likeable character
than Nick Cage was. Hell, Jaleel White (A.K.A. Steven
Q. Urkel—see picture below if
you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know who Steve Urkel is).
The fact is that Nicholas Cage, while being a surprisingly versatile
actor in his own weird way, was not what I would have considered a primo choice
for a character who seems to be a modern-day variation
on Indiana Jones. And have you ever seen Nicholas Cage run?! He runs like an
elderly high-school algebra teacher with bunions and a case of the trots. I
haven't seen such stiff, awkward running since James Garner as Jim
Rockford. Nicholas Cage simply was
not believable in this movie. If you
want to see Nicholas Cage doing his thing in a movie that you can’t help but
like, this is not it. I suggest Honeymoon
in Vegas in spite of the fact
that it’s got Sara Jessica Mr. Ed Parker in it or The
Rock --
if you want to see a
good movie with Nicholas Cage.
This movie really didn’t
need him.
The rest of the cast did a pretty passable job, but this was a Disney movie after
all, and so the options of reasonable plot progressions were pretty tame and
pretty limited.
John Voight—bless his heart—could probably have phoned in his
entire performance.
Diane Kruger (Diane who?
Exactly.) did a reasonable job of being the obligatory female in the
movie, but I think that more could have been done with her character. It was
almost as though every once in a while the director remembered that he had a
woman on the call sheet for the day's filming and literally shoved her
into the shot. I wonder if she can act? Maybe someday
she'll get to. Typical Disney bullshit.
Sean Bean was very good as the cookie-cutter Disney bad-man, but then
when was the last time you saw Sean Bean do a bad job of anything?
Harvey Keitel… in a Disney
flick?! Well, I guess anything is possible these days.
Here, again, is a case of an actor who seems to be fulfilling a
gambling obligation (maybe he lost a
bet? ) by being in this
movie. What he did was very good, but… well, there was nothing memorable
there.
Christopher Plummer, however—as ALWAYS—did an outstanding job as the
mysterious old grandpa. I honestly don’t know why he agreed to be in a movie
like this. He wasn’t in it nearly long enough to suit me, and it would have been
a much more lush movie if he’d been in it more, but
c’est la vie.
I honestly don’t know how necessary this movie really was. It’s
hard for ANYTHING in this sort of genre to even come close to the standard set
by movies like Raiders
of the Lost Ark and The
Mummy/Scorpion King types of movies.
Heck, even Richard Chamberlain's performance as Alan Quartermain in the tongue-in-cheek King
Solomon's Mines was more believable
than this tightly coiled pile of Disney Magic. The visual effects were…
OK. The storyline was
pretty contrived, but with a movie like this, contrived is the only thing that
really works as long as it’s got good direction and good production
values.
This one just never seemed to build up a
head of steam. It will be a great movie for a rainy winter day when the kids are
driving you nuts and you can't let them outside so you park them in front of
the tube (Electric One-eyed
Babysitter to the rescue!) and stick this movie
in the machine.
OR this will
be especially good on a day when you’re too sick to go to work. Why? It
because I think this would be a great movie to fall asleep
to.
A Disney Classic, for
sure.
I did it to this one,
too! I forgot to describe the movie!
National Treasure involves a treasure hunter from a family of similar treasure
hunters, pursuing the legend of a massive treasure of unimaginable wealth which
has passed from one group to another, one nation to another, growing in mass
with each transfer until it is simply too vast and valuable to comprehend. It is
supposedly under the care of the Knights Templar and later the Freemasons,
several of whom signed the Declaration of Independence. Now here's the crazy
part...
There's a map or something on the back of the Declaration of Independence and
the treasure hunter decides that he has to steal the Dec.of.
And
I still think that Nicholas Cage runs like his butt hurts.