National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Lincoln parked: Nicolas Cage in National Treasure: Book of Secrets. 

As in the 2004 original, Gates is again
accompanied by his own professorial pop Patrick (Jon Voight); Ben’s
estranged sweetie Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger), who as a director of
document conservation can get access everywhere on the Beltway; and his
gadget-guru buddy Riley Poole (Justin Bartha, who supplies more Dave
Coulier-level comic relief). Also back for more: scriptwriters Cormac
and Marianne Wibberley, director Jon Turteltaub and supporting player
Harvey Keitel as an FBI agent, here only receiving slightly more screen
time than the cameo appearance by Randy Travis. 

The sequel retains the original’s bent
for historical speculations and, alas, a generic approach to
storytelling. It’s hard not to be aware that the modern-day National Treasure
flicks are obvious knockoffs of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’
retro Indiana Jones epics (although there is a gag involving would-be
author Riley striking an Indy-ish pose for a bookstore standee), and
that Turteltaub lacks a directorial signature, let alone any sense of
panache, other than to put these puzzle-laden pictures together with a
yeoman competence. That’s most evident about 46 minutes in, when Ben
Gates must call upon his mother, University of Maryland professor Emily
Appleton (Helen Mirren), to help solve a linguistics dilemma—but
Patrick Gates resists a reunion with his ex-wife after 32 years. Their
domestic squabbling should be a high point (Patrick defends himself
with, “I was not the one who left the toothbrushes in Marrakesh!”), yet
even Mirren’s imperious demeanor gets squandered amid Turteltaub’s
lackluster pacing.

Meanwhile, the Wibberleys’ script jams
in all sorts of ciphers, codes, keywords and glyphs, not to mention the
genre’s usual hidden latches, tunnels and other secret geegaws. Ben,
Abigail and Riley blithely saunter into heavily fortified locations
such as Buckingham Palace and the White House; at one point Ben cajoles
the U.S. president (the reliably Kennedy-esque Bruce Greenwood) into
investigating a subterranean passage at Mount Vernon, and the prez—an
architecture buff, it turns out—is up to the challenge, even if it
means ducking Secret Service protection. And contrivances turn up in
odd places: While examining the Statue of Liberty’s doppelganger in
Paris, Ben sidesteps police intervention by delivering some
philosophical quotations to a Montesquieu-loving cop.

Reality takes an early hike in this
follow-up (although it probably would have drowned in the overall
bombast of Trevor Rabin’s score), and Turteltaub can’t elicit the
necessary thematic overtones regarding the film’s clever running gag
about the Gates men having troubles understanding the clues presented
by their angry female partners. Even the best action sequence,
involving a teetering floor that could topple its inhabitants into
oblivion, is borrowed from another source, although the credits wisely
list the “inspiration” as the 1989 Oscar-winning animated short Balance.
At least Cage, who was so dull in the 2004 outing, manages to cut loose
now and then, notably when his Ben pretends to be inebriated during a
distracting maneuver at Buckingham Palace. 

Still, director Turteltaub can’t raise National Treasure: Book of Secrets
beyond the level of a pedestrian page-turner. And that’s a dissenting
opinion compared to its whopping $219 million box-office haul, with the
family trade surely lured by the safe harbor of a PG-rated
Disney—although it might be an indication that there’s a lot of
undemanding moviegoers out there who always settle for less. 

One can’t quibble, however, about the
extras-loaded double-disc issued by Walt Disney Home Entertainment. The
first DVD has the movie itself in a letterboxed (2.35:1) incarnation
that looks swell, accompanied by a commentary track with Turteltaub and
Voight. The second disc has plenty more, including a 10-minute vignette
on how to film a London car chase, a three-minute overview on the
real-life Knights of the Golden Circle, and five minutes of bloopers,
most with Cage in cracking-up mode. Turteltaub also introduces a
quintet of deleted scenes, some of which should have stayed in, such as
a perilous escape as Cage’s hero walks across the Library of Congress’
glass ceiling, a ghoulish bit of business with Voight, Mirren and some
limb-less skeletons providing (pardon the pun) keys to escape, and a
seven-minute alternate scene that includes more screen time for Keitel
and Mount Rushmore. “As long as the movie’s working,” Turteltaub
ruefully affirms, “yeah, cut it out, make it shorter. But it kills you.”

 —Bill DeLapp