What’s a “good-bad” movie? It’s the kind of flick that might have you cackling, hollering or groaning, one that is not necessarily great cinema but is great fun. It’s highly watchable even though — or maybe because — it’s memorably ridiculous. And it always has at least one element that pushes it into absurd territory.
“How do you take something that is so profoundly ridiculous and really try to sell it?” Nicolas Cage asked in 2023 after watching a perpetually parodied clip of himself as Benjamin Franklin Gates, the treasure hunter and cryptographer in Jon Turteltaub’s family-friendly heist adventure “National Treasure.”
“I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Independence,” Gates says with zen-like confidence to his computer-whiz sidekick, Riley Poole (Justin Bartha), before coolly strolling out of the National Archives rotunda.
“I think what really makes it work is how serious Justin and I are taking it,” Cage added.
The movie, a blockbuster for Disney in 2004, channels “Indiana Jones,” “North by Northwest” and “The Thomas Crown Affair” as it follows Gates, Poole and the archivist Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) through Washington, Philadelphia and New York City. With the priceless document in tow, they try to outrun the bad guys and get to a hidden treasure first by solving a series of ciphers and riddles.
“National Treasure,” which had been in development for years, was released in the wake of Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code,” hitting theaters at a time of newfound enthusiasm for historical puzzle-box plots, secret societies and academics turned action heroes.
For some critics, the sheer absurdity was too much to stomach. In his scathing review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden called Turteltaub a “Hollywood hack” and the movie “witless and shoddy.” Ouch.
The cast and crew, however, got the last laugh: The movie remains a cultural phenomenon, one particularly well-suited for this summer as the United States celebrates 250 years since the signing of the Declaration.
What Makes It Good?
A Sprint Through the Constitutional Capitals
After Gates and Poole survive an expedition to the Arctic Circle, in which their associate, Ian (Sean Bean), turns out to be a villain — explosions go boom — the race is on up the eastern seaboard to keep the Declaration out of Ian’s hands.
In Washington, we spin through the National Archives, the J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. Building, the Library of Congress and the Lincoln Memorial. In Philadelphia, the gang hoofs it to the Franklin Institute, the Liberty Bell Center, Independence Hall, Reading Terminal Market and Old Pine Street Church Cemetery. And finally, in New York City, the USS Intrepid and Trinity Church, on Broadway and Wall Street, get their moment.
Instead of acting simply as backdrops, the locations and the architecture here are the puzzle. At the movie’s premiere, Cage said he, at first, thought he’d only do a treasure hunt movie if it were set in a faraway land or under the sea, but was convinced that there’s plenty of mystery closer by.
“This is what’s interesting — that it’s here at home,” he said.
So if you’re game to suspend all disbelief, “National Treasure” doubles as the best school field trip ever.
What Makes It Bad?
One High Jink Too Many
There’s really never a dull moment in “National Treasure,” but maybe it needed one. The capers come at such breakneck speed that they start to lose impact.
The thermal sensor hack and gift-shop switcheroo? Clever. The janitor disguise and secret-ink reveal? Classic. The daylight saving time math and the fingerprint lift? Fun.
But by the time the crew is playing hide-and-seek amid food stalls and headstones, the novelty has worn thin. And when they must survive the final obstacle — a plunging underground shaft with rickety wooden staircases and elevators collapsing all around them — it’s hard not to feel trapped on a never-ending Disney ride.
What Makes It Good-Bad?
A Conspiracy Theory Bonanza
No appetite these days for the blurring of real American history with conspiracy theories? OK, fair. But if you’re still able to derive some shameless pleasure from indulging in, let’s call it, American folklore, then “National Treasure” has you more than covered.
Real historical groups stretched to fictional extremes include the Knights Templar, with their buried riches, and the Masonic Founding Fathers, with their cryptic clues — symbols, geometry and tools seeded throughout the nation’s foundational architecture and blueprints that lead to treasure. And what about aliens? A quick line, said with a wink, suggests they helped build the Pyramids of Giza and the Great Wall of China.
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