Sunday, March 15, 2009

It's always Lincoln. Never any love for Garfield ... : "National Treasure: Book of Secrets"

I know, I know ... why? Well, I did see the first one. And the sequel was the best candidate for "Mindless Streaming Netflix Movie I Can Watch On My Laptop While My Grandparents Are Sacked Out In My Den." Caught this right around when my latest kid was born, starting it the weekend before and finishing it in the hospital -- love the wifi -- a few days afterward. Strangely, I was still able to follow the highly intellectual plot despite the gap.

Nic Cage -- pretty much giving up on going for Oscars -- is back as Ben Gates, treasure hunter. This time, Ed Harris says his great granddad (or whoever) was part of the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. Neither Ben nor his dad (Jon Voight) like the sound of that, so they get the band back together -- the annoying funny guy and the hot blonde girl -- and go globetrotting, solving riddles and finding clues and getting into all sorts of scrapes. Watch out!

Harvey Keitel and Helen Mirren(!) also get involved in this mess, which doesn't really qualify as dumb fun because it would like to think it's clever. Oh, and it's not that funny. The comic relief guy is more irritating, and I can recall only one scene that made me laugh. (When Cage sticks his hand into a hole to recover some lost thingamajig.)

But hey, we've got three Oscar winners and two nominees. With that lineup, the real conspiracy is how this movie didn't go home with any statues last year.

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