This is Nicholas Cage. Remember the days when I used to make quiet movies for smart people? Things have really changed!
National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets is my latest loud movie for morons. It’s yet another flick about maps, landmarks and buried treasure that makes The Da Vinci Code so look like Tolstoy.
I’m not a really a subtle actor, and if by any chance you want a subtle movie, please excuse me for this one. This one is about how my character Benjamin Franklin learns that an ancestor collided with the John Wilkes Booth gang, who wanted him to gather a page from Booth’s diary that may have been part of a treasure map.
I just have to find it because that will clear my great great grandfather of taking part in the Lincoln assassination. How does my finding a treasure prove my ancestor had nothing to do with Lincoln’s killing? Please don’t think so much.
My girlfriend and I have broken up. So quite obviously she helps me do some spectral imaging of those papers to discover a secret code.
Ed Harris plays the bad guy who likes shooting at me. He gets in a car chase with me in London for no reason inspite of him having all the means to track everything I do without my knowledge. If you have ever been to London and noticed that you could not have a car chase that can last more than 15 seconds because of traffic, please stay away from my movie.
I read something inscribed at a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Paris about "resolute twins" and I figure out in an instance that this is a coded reference to a desk of Queen Victoria’s and the desk of the American president. Obviously the priceless royal artifact is kept in Buckingham Palace, alone and unguarded, so I get to spend all the time in the world with it to figure out the next clue.
Later on I will discover that anybody who knows anybody else working in the White House can have as much time as he wants to poke around the President’s desk. Yes, I’m referring to the President of the United States here!
More than an hour into the movie, we all start blabbering about a secret book known only to Presidents that has all the riddles of the world in it, like the missing minutes from the Watergate tapes and the real deal on the Kennedy assassination. Don’t wonder how this stuff can remain a secret when control of the White House keeps flipping between the opposing parties.
So now I have to talk to the President. Did you know that anyone wearing a tuxedo can sneak into one of his fancy parties, walk up to him and get his undivided attention for as long as he wants? And moreover, if you are nice to him, you can get him to follow you, all alone, into some secret caves.
Last but not the least, please take your pick to pay for this or not, because quite surprisingly I see a few reviews supporting my director’s vision.