National Treasure (2-Disc Collector's Edition) (DVD)

Starting out as a fun enough adventure and increasing in idiocy as its mysteries unravel, National Treasure is the type of movie that exemplifies everything wrong with Jerry Bruckheimer productions. It's exaggeratedly convoluted plot disrupts the flow of its action, and its bravado (some might say lunk-headed) action prevents the plot from ever being anything more than a murky mess. This new two-disc DVD continues the insanity as it is yet another shameless release that adds little new content to existing DVDs in order to cash in on new franchise installments.

While far from boring, I cannot say that National Treasure is a great movie, or even a good one. The plot, which at its heart is The Da Vinci Code meets American history, is too poorly developed to be compelling, and the adventure aspect, which by all means should be exciting, is too poorly executed to be fun. Starring Nicolas Cage as treasure hunter Ben Gates, National Treasure begins in the Antarctic, introducing us to its key players, including Ben, his sidekick Riley (Justin Bartha), and his nemesis Ian Howe (Sean Bean). This sequence, which quickly deteriorates into a poorly filmed and executed action sequence culminating in an explosion. The scene is set up with a drawn out conversation that feels more than a little boring, and then, quite clumsily, switches over to all-out action. This would normally mean the movie could most likely be written off as fun and harmless, but in the case of National Treasure, it is a huge mark against it.

This is a sloppily assembled film that can never decide whether it wants to commit to being a fun action thriller, or a clever cerebral one, and suffers greatly for it. The scenes of exposition ramble on endlessly, and the action is poorly filmed. The action sequences are fairly impressive, but they're shot in such dull, cookie-cutter way that they feel cheapened, and come across like something from a bad TV movie. I'm not sure whether Bruckheimer or director Jon Turtletaub is to blame for this, but either way someone screwed up. There's a good movie somewhere in National Treasure (even Nicolas Cage is tolerable), but the concept is so poorly realized that all potential is squandered.

As far as the special features on this new "Two-Disc Collector's Edition" go, there's not much to distinguish it from the previous release. All that's new are a few featurettes detailing stuff no one will care about, and more deleted scenes. I have no idea why they would feel compelled to pile additional deleted scenes on top of the deleted scenes on the first disc, but one thing's certain: at more than two hours long, National Treasure could stand to lose even more scenes.

National Treasure is a movie that I cannot quite understand the appeal of. I understand it has its supporters that look at it as good, cheesy fun, but I cannot jump on the bandwagon. This would definitely be exciting for younger viewers who are yet to be exposed to serious action movies, but overall, I would have been much happier if I had just watched one of the Indiana Jones movies. With hardly any new features, this release is the one to buy if you really love National Treasure or if you don't own it yet, but if you haven't bought this already, I don't see why you ever would.