National Treasure (2004)

National Treasure is a national treasure. Like all Nic Cage movies, though, it’s off-the-charts weird. Would you expect anything less? On a scale of really bad to really good Nicolas Cage fare, this is pretty good stuff. 

It’s cheesy as all hell, as you would expect from the damn movie where a guy decides to steal the Declaration of Independence. Still, it's coherent and there’s no shitty accent and even though the characters act on bizarre whims and strange logic, it is watchable without actually being a case of agonisingly-awful-watch-through-your-fingers watchable. 

While it's plodding along with standard adventure movie tropes, it's doing so in style. Puzzles are solved in ridiculous fashion, people proceed from A to B via J, and it’s wonderful. Nicolas Cage, in his slight elevation from reality, really works in his role! That feels like praise I rarely get to apply. He has absolutely no romantic chemistry with the historian played by Diane Krueger, sure. Still, like playing a Vegas magician or a terrorist for hire, his manic energy and strange line reads work with his ever so slightly unhinged character. It ties in well with the elevation from reality that everything in the movie adheres to, like the bizarre directorial choices and the casting and the deep web of conspiracies dictating our world. The more I think about this, the more I’m amazed I haven’t watched the sequel yet. 

Rating: 6/10 - This is a rating given on actual movie quality! Often I have to qualify just based on enjoyment, but this is watchable as well as being a totally acceptable family friendly movie.