HAMSTER RATING:
DIRECTOR: Jon Turteltaub
STARRING: Nicholas Cage (Benjamin Franklin Gates), Diane Kruger (Abigail Chase), Justin
Bartha (Riley Poole), Sean Bean (Ian Howe), Jon Voight (Patrick Gates), Harvey Keitel
(Sadusky), Christopher Plummer (John Adams Gates)
"Get back in your coffin, Franklin, the Declaration is mine! You too, Hancock!"
SYNOPSIS: Ben Gates has spent his whole life searching for a mythical treasure left behind
by the founding fathers of America. His trail of clues has led him to the Declaration of
Independence, which he believes contains a map that will lead him to the vast fortune.
Teaming up with the beautiful but reluctant Dr. Abigail Chase of the National Archives, Ben is
soon on the run from the FBI and from his former treasure-seeking partner, Ian, in a race to
get to the treasure first.
REIVIEW: Very simply, National Treasure is a summer popcorn movie that somehow got
planted several months too late in the year. But no matter, it's fun, entertaining,
inoffensive, and pretty absurd from start to finish. A Mission Impossible meets
Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom, only a little more nerdy. This movie is probably every
frustrated history major's fantasy, drawing on an intricate knowledge of Revolutionary times,
the Freemasons, and the life and writings of Bejamin Franklin. In fact, ignoring the
conspiracy theory overtones, National Treasure is chock full of mini history lessons:
Did you know that when Benjamin Franklin was a teenager, he wrote a series of letters to
his brother's newspaper under the pen name of Silence Dogood, a middle aged widow?
Did you remember that there were 55 signers of the Declaration of Independence, including
at least nine Freemasons?
The Liberty Bell was cast by two men named Pass and Stow.
Thomas Edison tried over 2,000 times to invent a working lightbulb before he succeeded.
And, Daylight Savings Time was actually Benjamin Franklin's idea.
Otherwise, National Treasure is a pretty run-of-the-mill flick. The story arch is
predictable--boy meets girl, boy steals Declaration of Independence, girl gets kidnapped by
baddies, boy rescues girl, boy and girl discover treasure and fall in love. There's also the
obligatory comic sidekick in the form of Riley (Bartha) and a small subplot dealing with the
damaged relationship between Ben (Cage) and his father (Voigt). Everything gets resolved as
it should, with the hero and heroine living happily ever after, Ben and his father reconciling
and the bad guy, Ian, getting his commupance. While none of this is in any way different than
the dozens of other assembly-line popcorn movies being churned out these days, National
Treasure does it with above average writing and good performances from its cast. Since it
is a Jerry Bruckheimer production (Armageddon, Pirates), the effects are good,
especially in the more fantasic sequences like the obligatory explosion and in the underground
cave.
"is that guy in the second row a dude or a chick?"
