Saturday, January 5, 2008

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

National Treasure: Book of Secrets
My family and I had been looking forward to this sequel because of how much we enjoyed the movie National Treasure. We went three days after it opened because we wanted to avoid the crowds of this reportedly highly successful box office hit.

From the beginning the movie was intriguing. It starts off with Ben Gates (Nicholas Cage) and his dad played by Jon Voight, giving a lecture about the elder Gates' grandfather during the time of President Lincoln's assassination.

No sooner do they finish their talk than the character played by Ed Harris, dispels the image of the grandfather by proving he was in fact an accessory to the president's assassination.

Well, then the adventure begins.

One clue leads to another and soon they are traveling the world trying to clear the Gates' name by finding the lost city of Cibola.

This movie is geared for everyone's entertainment. It was produced by Disney so for the most part it is good family fun. Except for the fact, that the main character and his girlfriend lived together. Living together without the sacrament of marriage is never a very good message to send to children or teens. Anyway, you would think that since the original movie was released in 2004, this couple would be married and have children by now, instead of still dating...but I digress...

The are interesting little factoids that come up during the movie such as there are actually three statues of liberty; there are identical desks at the White House and Buckingham Palace; there is an underground passage in one of the nation's monuments, etc. If your children are anything like my son, he or she will do a little research via the internet to find out if these tidbits about American history are true or not.

And, don't worry if you haven't seen the original National Treasure. Even though all the characters are the same and I believe all the original main actors return for this sequel, it is a new adventure.

I didn't go into too much detail here because I wanted to leave you with the SciFi Catholic's entertaining review of the movie. The review can be found at the following link.

Can I still have fun if I can't understand it?

For those of you interested and have not seen the movie yet, you can check out the trailer and visit at the Official Website

5 comments:

Charlotte (WaltzingM) said...

We just watched the first one last night. Some friends had warned us that it wasn't good because of all the historical inaccuracies but we actually enjoyed it. My husband loves history and he said as long as you can suspend your disbelief it's a fun bit of fantasy. I would like to see the sequel but we will probably have to wait until it comes out on DVD.

Thanks for the review and the links!

EC Gefroh said...

Matilda, your DH has the right idea I think you'll love the second one too.

Leticia said...

My girls and I enjoyed it tremendously last night, I just had to clear up the innaccuracies afterwards. No harm done.
Nice review, Esther.

Caroline said...

My entire family went to see the first one in theaters. As soon as it came out on DVD, we bought it (and we only buy a DVD once every 5 years so that means we REALLY liked it!). Then we just saw NT:BoS and loved it just as much as we loved the first one. The only inappropriate part is that they refer to Cage and his girlfriend living together and then when they are in the Oval Office the weird guy keeps staring at the girl's legs and butt. Those scenes only lasted a minute or two so I think it passed right over the younger kid’s heads.
We will definitely be buying this one. It is a movie that our kids can watch over and over without any adverse effects and they learn a little about history too.
My kids know that movies are made by anti-Catholic people so if they hear or see something anti-Catholic they know just to ignore it. Anything anti-Catholic in this movie was brief because we did not notice anything except the above-mentioned scenes. We know that the first movie named Carol as a Masson, but that was such a minor point it is hardly worth mentioning.

Candise and Crew said...

Our homeschool family enjoyed this sequel at the $1 movie theater! Not as historically educational as the first one, the "Book of Secrets" involves more story lines about the characters when we would have liked more about the landmarks themselves. Of course, it helps that we have visited Mount Vernon, the White House, and Mount Rushmore. And we LIKE all the characters -- especially the smart side-kick Riley. "Nobody talks like that anymore..."