| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
A welcome throwback to family-friendly PG moviemaking.
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| 70 |
LA Weekly
Luke Y. Thompson
This ain’t "The Da Vinci Code," folks, and the reason you can tell is that it’s actually quite entertaining.
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| 70 |
Washington Post
Cage is back in crackling good form in National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
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| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Director Jon Turteltaub has fun with Indian glyphs, giant stone pulleys, and an Indy Jones-worthy City of Gold located beneath the rocky shoals of Mount Rushmore.
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| 67 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
It's a measure of the film's infectious goofiness that Cage seems altogether more interested in clearing the name of a long-dead ancestor than in finding a city of gold.
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| 60 |
The Hollywood Reporter
It contains all the elements from the original film...But that's the problem: It's virtually the same movie with new locations. Oh, plus Helen Mirren. Not a bad addition, but the popcorn fun is gone.
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| 60 |
Variety
Graced with some extra star wattage courtesy of Helen Mirren and Ed Harris, this diminishing-returns sequel sends Nicolas Cage on another quest to strike it rich, get young auds excited about history and solve puzzles that are generally less stimulating than yesterday's Sudoku.
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| 60 |
The New York Times
Matt Zoller Seitz
Like its predecessor, “National Treasure,” this sequel amounts to a bunch of crossword puzzle answers stitched together with explosions, chases and displays of intuitive reasoning that the “Twin Peaks” F.B.I. agent Dale Cooper would reject as too right-brained.
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| 58 |
Baltimore Sun
A strictly by-the-book sequel: It doesn't cheat series fans but it doesn't offer many thrills or surprises or lingering puzzles, either.
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| 50 |
Boston Globe
Often as noisy, dippy, and enjoyable as 2004's "National Treasure," and when it's not, it's just another sequel, more absurd than most.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
No better than the first – which means it will probably be creamed by critics and make a jillion dollars. But really, standards are standards.
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| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The movie has terrific if completely unbelievable special effects. The actors had fun, I guess. You might, too, if you like goofiness like this.
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| 50 |
USA Today
This sequel is what you would expect: If you liked the original, you'll probably enjoy this retread. But be warned: It bogs down in a drawn-out scene near the end. There's certainly nothing to treasure about this movie, but if a popcorn movie with moderate intrigue and occasional humor is what you're after, this is just the ticket.
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| 50 |
Chicago Reader
Leave it to coproducer Jerry Bruckheimer to revive the Indiana Jones cycle without the period setting, the camp elements, or Spielberg's efficiency; director Jon Turteltaub just plods along, and the script by Marianne and Cormac Wibberley is equally poker-faced.
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| 50 |
TV Guide
It shares all the original's shortcomings —--it’s too long and too loud and filled with historical disinformation -- but none of the snap that made "National Treasure" fun for kids and a guilty pleasure for some adults.
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| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Everything has been significantly amped up -- bigger, louder, further removed from reality -- but it also feels that much more forced. Cage and Kruger seem like they're not having much fun this time around, and Bartha still gets the best throwaway lines.
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| 50 |
New York Daily News
If there was an iota of plausibility to any of this, we could forgive the film's greater leaps of imagination - all those break-ins of absurdly unprotected bastions of Western civilization. But this is not audience-participation suspense. All you can do is sit and watch, and wish there was more wonder.
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| 40 |
Empire
Andrew Osmond
A turgid action sequel that loses sight of plot and characters in its humourless efforts to impress.
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| 40 |
Film Threat
Mark Bell
Is the film fun? Yeah, in that campy kind of "The Mummy" way, but it is also weak as a sequel in that very campy "The Mummy Returns" type of way.
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| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
Book of Secrets isn’t so much a romp as a long trudge through American history factoids and conspiracy-theory gobbledygook. Cool car chase, though.
|
| 38 |
Chicago Tribune
All you want from a movie like this, really, is a little brainless fun, and it keeps holding out on you. Everyone looks fatigued. Even Cage’s toupee seems ambivalent about having signed on for a sequel.
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| 38 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Like a grade-school version of an Indiana Jones adventure.
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| 38 |
Premiere
Eric Alt
The movie does feature a nice, teasing chemistry between veteran actors Voight and Mirren (who clearly relishes the chance to break out of stuffy melodrama), but this shallow, empty puzzle requires more than playful banter to satisfy audiences willing to pay to play.
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| 38 |
ReelViews
"Mindless" applies, and Book of Secrets is more like a tame, endlessly repetitive amusement park ride than a motion picture.
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| 38 |
New York Post
It's another flick about maps, landmarks and buried treasure that makes "The Da Vinci Code" look like TOLSTOY.
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| 38 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Jason McBride
Throughout all this, Cage's lazy, dull performance – who knew there were so many ways to express smugness? – is enlivened only by poorly timed bursts of exuberance.
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