Film Review With Sam Larner

National Treasure: Book of Secrets 

So, it’s a sequel to a film that probably should never have been made in the first place, however the numbers added up so it’s inevitable we’d have a second and now a third in 2011. Nick Cage phones in another performance and God knows what evidence they had on Helen Mirren to make her do this. In short it’s terrible; however it is incredibly amusing in its woefulness.

The plot, and I use that term loosely, is utterly baffling. I saw the film and then checked Wikipedia to see if I had understood it, I hadn’t. Basically Nick Cage attempts to clear the name of his ancestors by  proving that they didn’t kill President Lincoln and then for no clear reason he has to visit the Eiffel Tower, Buckingham Palace, The White House and MT Rushmore.

First problem, no plot to speak of really just a bunch of stuff happening so that they can attempt to disguise Cage’s terrible acting. Second problem, the writers are credited as the Wibberley’s which as far as I could tell was to spread out the blame. There is dialogue in this film that is so wooden I thought I might get a splinter if I listened to it too much. There is a scene towards the end where they are in a great underground game of mouse trap and the room is filling with water, now they pull a giant plug and the water subsides. That’s fine, I can see what’s happening because they’ve spent millions on this set, that doesn’t stop Cage from standing up and saying “the water’s going down”, yes thanks for that Nick. We then have the best dialogue of the film with Nick and the gang on top of Mt Rushmore searching for clues. Nick then gets out a bottle of water and spills it on the mountain and in a moment of eureka! proportions he says “Pour water on the rocks, it makes them go dark”. Let me put this into context, I was sat there with my hands squeezing my mouth together trying to prevent the tripe coming off the screen from actually corrupting me, however I couldn’t stop myself from falling about laughing.

Thirdly, it is directed by a man who obviously has a very limited atlas. They visit France, and obviously the Eiffel Tower is in every single shot. They then visit London and break into Buckingham Palace and then they up sticks and travel to the White House. So three main problems, no plot to speak of, terrible dialogue and stereotypical Europe.

The film it’s most similar to is The Da Vinci Code, and this is much more fun than that. The best review of this film actually comes from within it; there is a scene where Helen Mirren and John Voight (ex husband and wife in the film) swing across a gorge on a rope ladder. As John is preparing to do this Helen stops him and says “This is stupid”, and that is a better review than I can muster.