Metascore
39 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 35 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 35
  2. Negative: 13 out of 35
  1. Overall the film is alluringly over-the-top without being overcooked.
  2. 75
    A wholesome, headlong extravaganza - a sort of North by Northeast sans high style and erotic innuendo.
  3. The film whirls by in a satisfying torrent of chases, escapes and discoveries.
  4. Cleverness can be overrated but it can be underrated too, and the best thing about National Treasure is how clever it is.
  5. Reviewed by: Peter Debruge
    63
    It's a tomb-raiding adventure movie several notches below Indiana Jones status.
  6. An undeniable pleasure of National Treasure was watching a movie shot locally that wasn't haunted by a virus or by dead people.
  7. 63
    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.
  8. If you're going to tell a wildly implausible tale of fortune hunting and unlikely heroes, you could do worse than National Treasure.
  9. 50
    National Treasure is so silly that the Monty Python version could use the same screenplay, line for line.
  10. Too bad the clever bits are swamped by no-brainer gunfights, rescues, and chases galore.
  11. It has no ambition, little sense and false sentiment, but it does have velocity, high spirits and scale.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. Too dumb and improbable to even go into.
  16. 50
    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.
  17. Reviewed by: Robert Abele
    50
    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.
  18. Reviewed by: Ed Park
    50
    Ham-handed to start, with a fondness for cochlea-crushing decibel levels, National Treasure gets more entertaining as the preposterousness rises.
  19. National Treasure is as doggedly hokey and ham-handed as a Disneyland ride.
  20. Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    50
    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.
  21. 50
    It runs like a Swiss watch, though the plot continuously turns on Cage's liberal interpretation of ridiculously cryptic clues.
  22. 40
    It's a silly, stupendously artificial enterprise.
  23. 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.
  24. 38
    Sort of "The Da Vinci Code for Dummies."
  25. Reviewed by: Mike Clark
    38
    Ten minutes into the picture, you're searching the screen for life-support machines.
  26. 38
    National Treasure's storyline isn't compelling or coherent enough to warrant the term "plot."
  27. Reviewed by: Aaron Hillis
    38
    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.
  28. 30
    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.
  29. Rated PG, which must stand for "particularly gullible," it's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for people who slept through American history class.
  30. 25
    It's not just hard to believe any of this, it's impossible. And director Jon Turteltaub (Phenomenom) directs with robotic cheerlessness.
  31. Reviewed by: Pete Vonder Haar
    20
    Has almost nothing to recommend it.
  32. 20
    Absurdism taken to a new extreme.
  33. 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.
  34. 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.
  35. Isn't any fun at all, which is ultimately the most damning thing you can say about a Bruckheimer movie.
User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 150 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 80 out of 102
  2. Negative: 18 out of 102
  1. Definitely not as bad as the critics make it out to be, but National Treasure's storyline is very preposterous. The acting is O.K., and I'd say so is the movie. The history is terrible, however. Full Review »
  2. Gorg
    10
    Fantastic movie. Screw the critics.
  3. 10
    The critics have this all wrong. National Treasure was one of the best movies ever. P.S. There are like 50 guys who gave this a N/A score but said they loved it. What's up with that? Full Review »