Big Picture Big Sound

Guilty "Treasure"

How long can the Nicholas Cage goodwill last? Yes, he won an Oscar for "Leaving Las Vegas", but that was twelve years ago. The quality of his films seems to decrease with each passing year. For every "World Trade Center" and "Adaptation", he rubs five "Con Airs" or "Wicker Men" in our faces. I can't entirely fault him for his 2004 treasure-hunting time-waster "National Treasure". In light of the "Da Vinci Code" fervor of the time, making a quick dime-store knock-off must have seemed like a no-brainer. Fine; Movie made, check cashed, the end. But to make a sequel. A sequel? At this point (and keep in mind I recently saw "Next"), I think Mr. Cage might actually be trying to sabotage his career.

"National Treasure: Book of Secrets" picks up...oh, I don't know, I guess a couple years after the last one left off. Does it really matter? What counts is that the script, by returning scribes Cormac and Marianne Wibberley (though the story is also credited to Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio of "Pirates of the Caribbean" fame, so it took four people to cook this thing up) , has enough pseudo-history and faux-conspiracy to mollify the Dan Brown addict in all of us. Where the original dealt with Ben Franklin's glasses and swiping the Declaration of Independence. "Secrets" has Mr. Cage's Ben Franklin Gates breaking into Buckingham Palace and, sigh, kidnapping the President. Yes, that President. All this in the name of finding a mythical lost city of gold and thereby clearing his ancestor's name (somehow this all ties into the assassination of Lincoln, but don't ask me how).

The happy-to-be returning cast and crew are all back in action. Justin Bartha isn't nearly the lovable sidekick he thinks he is. And Diane Kruger is little more than a pretty face as Ben's now-ex-girlfriend. Jon Voight is back as Ben's cuddly (yes, he can be cuddly if he tries) father. And (sigh) Harvey Keitel shows up to reprise his role as the worst FBI agent in history. The three new additions to this paycheck-machine are Ed Harris as a vaguely Southern son of the Confederacy, Bruce Greenwood as the type of President we all wish we had, and (I can't believe I have to write this) Helen Mirren as Ben's mother and an expert in pre-Columbian languages.

Despite returning helmer Jon Turteltaub's workmanly direction, "Book of Secrets" is simply too ludicrous to be fun. If the ease with which Ben gets into the Oval Office doesn't get you, his underground sojourn with the President surely will. And then there's Mr. Cage himself. Occasionally in "Secrets", the actor will let loose and add a bit of inflection to one of his lines recalling the actor we all miss. Other than that, there's not much of a character to hang this fluke of a franchise on. Watching "Secrets" is actually an uncomfortable experience. It's like the feeling you get when you see someone driving a Hummer or leaving the refrigerator door open. It's simply a waste of resources.