National Treasure: Book of Secrets

It’s almost an insult to America that there’s a series so unrealistic, physically and historically. At that, it kind of attempts to tell us some absolute garbage. So…Queen Elizabeth was a Confederate sympathizer? Wow…Uh…Area 51 actually exists? Wow…It’s almost amazing to think that we plopped down $400 million to see the first one…That in itself is hilarious.

Thomas Gates is a treasure fanatic, as evidenced heavily in the first one. After finding the fabled treasure in the first, the team has broken up. Tech geek Riley Poole has written a book that no one’s read, and Thomas has been kicked out of his girlfriend’s house. And to make matters worse, a wealthy family comes along and shows the world a missing page from the diary of John Wilkes Booth that alleges that Thomas’ great-great grandfather helped to plan the assassination of Lincoln.

So Thomas decides to, for some reason, find some ancient treasure that could help clear his name. But can he do it with the whole world watching him, several police on his trail, and other people looking for the treasure?

I guess with this series a lot of people are gonna walk around saying, “Hey, Queen Elizabeth paid the Confederates!”, and stuff like that. Well, in that regard, I guess that’s probably inevitable. And if there’s a big Book of Secrets that hides our nation’s secrets, I’m pretty sure there’s not just a 4-digit combination in a library guarding it.

But as always, Hollywood tries to make us forget the unrealism by showing us big, flashy explosions and car crashes. And on that level, National Treasure succeeds. But as a film, a movie on its own, it fails. This treasure is best kept buried. C