NATIONAL TREASURE (2004)

There’s a deliciously preposterous idea here (Knights of the Templar put clues to their treasure on the back of the Declaration of Independence), but since this is a Jerry Bruckheimer/Disney pic, CGI’d within an inch of its life by megger Jon Turteltaub, you can count on seeing not so much a script as a tsunami of visualized script notes. The obvious template here is Indiana Jones, but Nicholas Cage’s hangdog look & scary orange hair hardly lend themselves to high spirited adventure. Worse are co-horts Diane Kruger, who displays not a lick of attraction to anyone on screen and poor Justin Bartha’s by-the-numbers goofy sidekick. He’s right out of a Hanna-Barbara tv cartoon. Only Jon Voight, playing an unlikely father to Cage, gets the tone of mocked serious shenanigans just right. Fun shouldn’t look like this much work.