"; if(is_file("header.php")) include "header.php"; else include "../header.php"; ?>

TORRENT OF CLUE HUNTING MAKES THIS DOOZIE WATCHABLE Amazing how much a movie will reveal itself through its background score. If you overheard National Treasure playing in another room, it'd probably sound like your dentist's. But I digress. It's a trippy little fusion of American history and a contemporized Indiana Jones, not to be taken seriously by anyone who's merrily avoided books like "Cracking the Da Vinci Code" and ergo still has his ballbearings in place. After a fussy setup of a whole lineage of bewildered sleuths (Nicholas Cage's family has forever been looking for that One Big Clue, and let's mention here that his name in the film is, nudge nudge, Benjamin Franklin Gates) the movie slithers into a domino of clue-hunting and deciphering a cryptic missive at the back of, gulp, the Declaration of Independence. Wonder why we didn't go shoveling under the Statue of Liberty or shearing Rumsfeld's scalp to check if his cranium offered some clues. National Treasure may be a vacuous thriller, but to its credit it's oddly educational. For instance, did you know that Benjamin Franklin is credited not only with the invention of bifocals but also 3-D glasses? Hmm? Hmm? If that's not your thing, watch it for the no-brainer gunfights and explosions. But for sanity's sake don't expect the copious adventurism of Indiana Jones or the spunk of Team America from last year. For that, The Incredibles is still the film to beat at the theatres.