A rare shot of a film crew actually churning out a sequel.

Note: I'm much more loose-lipped than usual about the plot of this movie. Sorry, but it's so ridiculous I just couldn't help myself.

Allow me to quote myself for a moment, from my review of the first National Treasure movie. I said it was “silly and cartoonish and requires a super-human level of suspension of disbelief. Some movies can pull that off, some movies can’t, and this one has just enough self-deprecating awareness of its own absurdity to be fun rather than laughable” Unfortunately, this clumsy sequel doesn’t even achieve laughable. My adjectives of choice would be “lazy” and “boring”.  

National Treasure: Book of Secrets brings back Nicolas Cage as treasure-hunting historian Benjamin Franklin Gates, along with Diane Kruger as his intrepid love interest Abigail and Justin Bartha as tech geek/second banana Riley. They’re hot on the trail of another historical mystery, this one concerning a page from the diary of John Wilkes Booth that implicates one of Gates’s ancestors in the Lincoln assassination. In an effort to clear the family name, Gates performs a few feats of illegal derring-do, including breaking into the Queen of England’s study and kidnapping the President of the United States. (Because committing crimes is a sure-fire way to uphold the family honor.)

"As the Queen of England I'd like to respectfully disagree with the reviewer and say no, Mr. Gates may not 'take a gander' at my desk."

And here’s what’s so silly about that: Benjamin Gates is now a wealthy and famous treasure hunter. Everybody knows and admires what he did in the first movie. If he had said, “I’m trying to figure out who killed Lincoln; mind if I take a gander at the Queen’s desk?” the Buckingham Palace chaps would have probably said, “Sure thing.” (Or “jolly good,” seeing as how they’re British and all.) If he could get close enough to the President for kidnapping, he could have simply asked for a little help digging into this subject of great historical interest. (And in fact, not to spoil anything, but that’s exactly what he does, after the kidnapping, and the Pres is totally cool with it.) Make him just a little bit down and out and I may have bought the story, but the movie’s slew of writers were too lazy to come up with plausible reasons why Gates had to go through all the swashbuckling and skullduggery. Frankly, it wouldn’t have been that hard. Let’s see, how about if in addition to casting aspersions onto Gates’s great-great-whatever, Ed Harris as the movie’s vague villain, had accused Gates himself of, I don’t know, destroying historical artifacts. See, a semi-reasonable motive and I didn’t even break a sweat.

"Sorry, Nic, I am not going to delete Ghost Rider from your IMDB filmography."

And then there’s the fact that it’s kind of boring. There’s a pretty cool plot device (the book from the title) that’s glossed over in favor of an over-long third act at Mount Rushmore. And – spoiler alert again – the cavern full of priceless artifacts worked in the first movie, but is both ludicrous (What the hell were the Olmecs doing in South Dakota anyway?) and unnecessary here.  I know the word “treasure” is in the title, but that doesn’t necessarily have to mean big piles of gold. (And by the way, finding it really doesn’t prove Gates’s story so it’s also kind of pointless.) Oh, and don’t get me started on the bad guy, whose muddy motivation keeps changing and who we’re actually supposed to sympathize with by the end in spite of the fact that he’s nearly killed countless people in his quest for . . . I don’t know, what’s he after again?

So thumbs down on the story. How’s the execution? Well, the good, silly fun from the first move is largely missing. I did enjoy the London scenes, but other than that the whole thing kind of plods. At this rate I’m not holding out hope for the inevitable three-quel. This treasure held little value for me.

Gorilla Pants rating: 1 out of 4 bananas