(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from National Treasure: Book of Secrets)
Doug (vo): Why is it sequels always feel they have to do the exact same thing they did in the first one? They already did in the first one. Why would we want to see it again? National Treasure 2 almost falls into that trap.
Story and review[]
Doug (vo): There’s yet another treasure they have to find, and there’s yet another bad guy who wants to get to it first, and there’s yet another controversy that they have to clear their family name over. As if that wasn’t bad enough, we have our main characters who now lost all the money they got in the first film through some really dumb explanation, a scene where Nicolas Cage has to win the girlfriend over again to convince her of this crazy plot so they can fall in love again, and to make that worse, we have to do the exact same plot with Jon Voight and his ex-wife. That’s repeating a storyline from the first one twice! But the good news is, when the mystery and the action does start, it gets fun again. When the characters are all together and trying to figure this all out, it’s great and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s still just as goofy, it finds more landmarks to find these secret locations in. There’s more puzzles, more silly quests, and there’s more trailer fodder. Like, remember in the first film where he says, [Imitates Nicolas Cage] "I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Independence"? [Normal] Well, now this one is, [Imitates Cage] "I’m going to kidnap the President of the United States."
Ben Gates: I'm going to kidnap the President of the United States.
Doug (vo): Yeah, scenes like that are groaners, and anytime they try to recapture the setup of the first one, it fails, and it’s stupid and it’s pointless. But, again, like the first one when they try to focus on the actual treasure hunt element, it’s still a lot of fun. It’s still goofy, it’s still silly, but you still find yourself getting wound up in it. Ed Harris is a good bad guy, that’s Helen Mirren as the mother, and, yeah, even though they have her and Jon Voight complain a lot, when she’s not doing that, she’s a lot of fun. I just don’t get why they had to separate these characters and start them at Square 1 again when you don’t really need to. Why couldn’t they keep the money and use some new devices to find the stuff? How come nobody believes them again? Wouldn’t it make sense from the first film to believe this guy that maybe if he sounds crazy, he might actually be correct about it? But there’s still some really good decent scenes. For example, there’s this moment where the President is left alone and, like he said, he kidnaps him. But the conversations he has with him are actually kind of fun and engaging. I really enjoy the dialogue where he talks about the importance of his ancestors and his family name. I think it actually does it much better here than it does in the first film. But it pretty much leads exactly where you think it’s gonna lead. They find the treasure, they even sort of reveal the treasure in the same way with lighting the torches, the treasure kind of looks the same as the first film.
Final thought[]
Doug (vo): But I’ll admit, for the puzzle elements and the adventure and the journey, I...still kind of like it. I can’t bring myself to actually say, "Don’t see it", because all the stuff that was good in the first one is still good here, at least when it comes to the treasure hunt. Everything else? Man, it’s not needed. In my opinion, you could just cut out the first 20 minutes and go from there. But you got to take what you got, and for what we got, I think it’s okay. It’s not a bad follow-up, but not the best either. Give it a rent and find out for yourself.
[A scene showing the main characters discovering the treasure, the city of gold known as Cibola, is shown]