National Treasure - The clue is NOT in the title

Once upon a time, back when Nicolas Cage could actually 'sell' a big budget movie, some clever producer at Disney came up with a script for 'Indiana Jones' mixed with 'Ocean's Eleven.' Then someone else added a dash of 'True Lies' and then wrapped it up in 'The Da Vinci Code,' before the man in charge of the money mentioned that whatever this Frankenstein's monster of a film had to be fit for all the family... and promptly gave it a PG rating.  What once might have been a good idea with a major star somehow became something that was less than the multitude of all its inspirations.  And that's a shame, because I think - once upon a time - there was a good film in here trying to get out.

It opens with a young boy (later we discover is Nicolas Cage) being told by his grandfather about an artefact in US history that has been long forgotten and only accessible via certain clues left by their forefathers.  And tell the boy he does.  This opening scene goes on for about ten minutes (it felt like more) and is basically one long exposition dump setting up what the characters will later be looking for.  When it finally ends, we join Cage and his team in the arctic (or a studio in California that has a freezer in it).  They all find something and spend the next ten minutes adding more exposition as to how they will eventually use this new information to track it down.

I get the feeling that at this stage the producers realised that what they were making was a little 'talk heavy' and figured they better blow something up in order to wake the audience up (hopefully not literally).  Cue an action scene and a reminder to all American adventurers never to include a Brit among your party as Sean Bean decides it's time to pull off an early double-cross and - guess what - the film's villain is revealed to us all.

National Treasure' is not a short film.  It's close to two hours of more of the same.  The characters are never really given any time to develop.  Diane Kruger is the (tragically so) generic 'love interest' for Cage.  There's a younger guy who I never got his on screen name and can't be bothered to look up the actor's name - he's the comic relief.  As I mentioned, Sean Bean is the villain because... er, he's British.  That appears to be his only real motivation for wanting to get ancient relics before Cage (or Indiana Jones, I guess).  Expect more generic action, more generic characters and a hell of a lot more generic exposition.

Cage does his best with the script that he's given and, although he's never afforded the luxury of going 'the full Cage' (fans of his will know what that means), he does his best with what he's given.  But he's not given much.  There's no real chemistry between him and anyone else.  And that's not their fault either.  No matter how good any of the actors are, they just look bored - Sean Bean especially!

I know a film doesn't have to be completely be original to be good.  In fact, pretty much everything's been done now in terms of story-telling, so we're used to things being repackaged and churned out, just in a slightly different way that now makes them - at least appear - watchable.  However, 'National Treasure's' biggest problem is that it just doesn't know what it wants to be.  The obvious genre would be 'adventure' (ala 'Indiana Jones'), but then it veers off to some sort of comic spy movie like 'True Lies,' before quickly trying to pull off a heist like 'Ocean's Eleven.' I know many good films that have combined genres and worked; in fact... most do!  However, this is an example of a film exceeding its reach and trying to be too many things at once and not having a - true - target audience in mind and ending up appealing to very few.

I wonder how well it did in America, compared to the rest of the world.  To quote (the far superior) 'Team America: World Police' it is pretty 'America!  F*%k yeah!' all the way through.  Perhaps this is a 'national treasure' to the good citizens of the US of A, whereas out here in that small part of the world known as 'everywhere else,' it all feels a little overblown and self-indulgent to be the classic it could have been.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights