National Treasure

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Overall the film is alluringly over-the-top without being overcooked.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The film whirls by in a satisfying torrent of chases, escapes and discoveries.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A wholesome, headlong extravaganza - a sort of North by Northeast sans high style and erotic innuendo.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Cleverness can be overrated but it can be underrated too, and the best thing about National Treasure is how clever it is.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

National Treasure even has a rough time approaching the heart of ''The Amazing Race," a show that manages, in 44 minutes, to make you care about average folks as they follow clues across the globe.

Miami Herald Peter Debruge

It's a tomb-raiding adventure movie several notches below Indiana Jones status.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

An undeniable pleasure of National Treasure was watching a movie shot locally that wasn't haunted by a virus or by dead people.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

If you're going to tell a wildly implausible tale of fortune hunting and unlikely heroes, you could do worse than National Treasure.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

It runs like a Swiss watch, though the plot continuously turns on Cage's liberal interpretation of ridiculously cryptic clues.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It has no ambition, little sense and false sentiment, but it does have velocity, high spirits and scale.

Variety Scott Foundas

Tries to combine the suspense of old Saturday morning serials with the gusto of producer Jerry Bruckheimer's action pics. Falling short on both counts, this long, and long-winded, series of middling cliffhangers won't pump the adrenaline of action aficionados or -- the family crowd.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

National Treasure is as doggedly hokey and ham-handed as a Disneyland ride.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Too bad the clever bits are swamped by no-brainer gunfights, rescues, and chases galore.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

National Treasure is so silly that the Monty Python version could use the same screenplay, line for line.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Coming from writers responsible for such material as "Snow Dogs" and "The 6th Day," National Treasure is not so much a no-brainer as a brain-stunner, so audaciously ridiculous you are initially intrigued, then soon irritated by its incoherence.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The character of a scruffy computer nerd, played with might-as-well-enjoy-myself charm by little-known actor Justin Bartha, steals the picture from glossier players.

Village Voice Ed Park

Ham-handed to start, with a fondness for cochlea-crushing decibel levels, National Treasure gets more entertaining as the preposterousness rises.

LA Weekly Robert Abele

Can't match an ounce of the suspense generated by contestants frantically buying airline tickets on Bruckheimer's own TV money quest, "The Amazing Race." This movie is a fortune wasted.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Nicolas Cageologists will be sad to hear that he's entirely too normal in National Treasure -- he's mildly funny but doesn't make any of the kooky dramatic choices (needless accents, ranting about the orifices of Greek gods) that made his other Bruckheimer performances so much fun to watch.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Jon Voight shows up as Ben's daddy, and Harvey Keitel plays a devilishly goateed FBI agent: They're the only two actors who seem to have a sense of how ridiculous National Treasure is, but there's not enough of them to carry the picture.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Too dumb and improbable to even go into.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's a silly, stupendously artificial enterprise.

USA Today Mike Clark

Ten minutes into the picture, you're searching the screen for life-support machines.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Sort of "The Da Vinci Code for Dummies."

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

If the Founding Fathers had known National Treasure would be the result of their efforts to forge a new nation, they might have reached for the Wite-Out.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

For his fourth paycheck-cashing run through “J-Bruck’s” action-hero gauntlet, Cage lazily plays Benjamin Franklin Gates-the first of many overstuffed social-studies references.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

National Treasure's storyline isn't compelling or coherent enough to warrant the term "plot."

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

It lacks the conviction to embrace its own garish awfulness, resulting in little more than tedious historical and patriotic hokum, a preposterous potboiler done in by slack pacing and pedestrian execution.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Rated PG, which must stand for "particularly gullible," it's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for people who slept through American history class.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's not just hard to believe any of this, it's impossible. And director Jon Turteltaub (Phenomenom) directs with robotic cheerlessness.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Disney's National Treasure is supposed to be family-friendly, a PG-rated action adventure free of hard violence and bad language. That's admirable, to be sure, but with a friend like this a family doesn't need sleeping pills.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

If National Treasure mattered at all, you might call it a national disgrace, but this piece of flotsam is so inconsequential that it amounts to little more than a piece of Hollywood accounting.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Has almost nothing to recommend it.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Absurdism taken to a new extreme.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Isn't any fun at all, which is ultimately the most damning thing you can say about a Bruckheimer movie.