It's light romance, light comedy, light PG action violence, and a light romp through American history.
Extras:
Blu-ray exclusives are "Mission History: Inside the Declaration of Independence," and an all-new commentary with director Jon Turteltaub and actor Justin Bartha. Also included are features from the Collector's Edition DVD.
"Mission History" is a game . . . sort of. But it's a lot more complicated and slower than I would guess many people would have the patience for. First Riley in character gives you instructions via a blank screen, and then there appears a scanner over the Declaration of Independence, and two gizmos: a decoder (which has "decode" and "explore" functions) and a navigator (which has "playlist" and "navigate" options), the purpose of all this being to scan sections of the document and try to decode something or other. But as I said, it takes someone with more patience than I have, or maybe just someone who cares. I found it kind of blah.
Compared to the new commentary that director Jon Turteltaub did on "National Treasure 2," the full-length track on this new Blu-ray is also disappointing. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a bust, but it's darned close. Let's just say that I don't think Turteltaub will be inviting Justin Bartha to team with him anything time soon. Bartha babbles when he's not being silent, and has little to offer in the way of anecdotes or insights. At times, he's even counterproductive, as when he remarks "Oh my God" and Turteltaub says, "You can't say G-O-D. This is Disney." At some point, Turteltaub even chastises him (albeit playfully) for his non-contribution. It's a dull and pointless track that isn't nearly as rich and full of material as the one Turteltaub did with Jon Voight. So much for the Blu-ray exclusives.
Thankfully there are plenty of carryover features from the 2-disc Collector's Edition. They're all brief and relatively superficial, but some are still entertaining. There are seven deleted scenes playable with or without extensive commentary by Turteltaub, along with an alternate ending with intro. For those who care about such things, there's an animatic (animated storyboard) of the opening scene that's under three minutes. Then come the mini-features:
"Ciphers, Codes, and Codebreakers" introduces us to real-life cryptologists and gives a few interesting moments in the history of codes and a few basics in codebreaking. It's only 12 minutes long, so don't expect the equivalent of a matchbook correspondence course, but I still found it one of the more interesting ones. Same with "Treasure Hunters Revealed," which spotlighted the Mel Fisher operation in Key West as they talked about the treasure of the Atocha and her sister ship, and author-treasure hunter W. C. Jameson, who spent seven years of his life to locate a real "treasure of the Sierra Madres": 888 bars of silver that were stashed by outlaws. Two very different styles of treasure-hunting, but again, a feature so brief that you'll wish it were twice the length.
Other equally short features are on "Exploding Charlotte" (can a Jerry Bruckheimer film NOT have a bonus feature on pyrotechnics?), "Steal a National Treasure" (how they came up with the idea), "On the Set of American History" (cast/crew talking about how it feels to be so close to history), "National Treasure On-Location" (behind-the-scenes footage), and "The Templar Knights" (a very brief and incomplete primer on them and the Masons).
The menu screen itself is pretty nifty, with one of the lenses from Ben Franklin's glasses the cursor that moves to highlight menu items. I've seen menus where you couldn't tell what was being highlighted, and so this is a real pleasure. But with Blu-rays, what looks cool often takes twice as long, and that's the complaint here. It's a little slow. Same with the Trivia Track, which employs the same lens technique. You have to wait up to 30 seconds for another lens to pop up and finish a thought or sentence. It's not a very good track for the impatient, and for that matter, it's not a very good track period. All of the info is the kind of stuff an intern could Google. There's nothing here that shows any serious research.
Bottom Line:
"National Treasure" is everything you'd want from a popcorn movie. It's light romance, light comedy, light PG action violence, and a light romp through American history. But that's all it set out to be. In the cinematic world of cipher-quest-adventures, I'd rate "Raiders of the Lost Ark" a 10, "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" a 5, and "National Treasure" a 7. Though if I could have gotten into the spirit of the whole thing, I would have put those numbers into a cipher and led you to a few of Dean or John's reviews to get my final rankings!
Blu-ray exclusives are "Mission History: Inside the Declaration of Independence," and an all-new commentary with director Jon Turteltaub and actor Justin Bartha. Also included are features from the Collector's Edition DVD.
"Mission History" is a game . . . sort of. But it's a lot more complicated and slower than I would guess many people would have the patience for. First Riley in character gives you instructions via a blank screen, and then there appears a scanner over the Declaration of Independence, and two gizmos: a decoder (which has "decode" and "explore" functions) and a navigator (which has "playlist" and "navigate" options), the purpose of all this being to scan sections of the document and try to decode something or other. But as I said, it takes someone with more patience than I have, or maybe just someone who cares. I found it kind of blah.
Compared to the new commentary that director Jon Turteltaub did on "National Treasure 2," the full-length track on this new Blu-ray is also disappointing. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a bust, but it's darned close. Let's just say that I don't think Turteltaub will be inviting Justin Bartha to team with him anything time soon. Bartha babbles when he's not being silent, and has little to offer in the way of anecdotes or insights. At times, he's even counterproductive, as when he remarks "Oh my God" and Turteltaub says, "You can't say G-O-D. This is Disney." At some point, Turteltaub even chastises him (albeit playfully) for his non-contribution. It's a dull and pointless track that isn't nearly as rich and full of material as the one Turteltaub did with Jon Voight. So much for the Blu-ray exclusives.
Thankfully there are plenty of carryover features from the 2-disc Collector's Edition. They're all brief and relatively superficial, but some are still entertaining. There are seven deleted scenes playable with or without extensive commentary by Turteltaub, along with an alternate ending with intro. For those who care about such things, there's an animatic (animated storyboard) of the opening scene that's under three minutes. Then come the mini-features:
"Ciphers, Codes, and Codebreakers" introduces us to real-life cryptologists and gives a few interesting moments in the history of codes and a few basics in codebreaking. It's only 12 minutes long, so don't expect the equivalent of a matchbook correspondence course, but I still found it one of the more interesting ones. Same with "Treasure Hunters Revealed," which spotlighted the Mel Fisher operation in Key West as they talked about the treasure of the Atocha and her sister ship, and author-treasure hunter W. C. Jameson, who spent seven years of his life to locate a real "treasure of the Sierra Madres": 888 bars of silver that were stashed by outlaws. Two very different styles of treasure-hunting, but again, a feature so brief that you'll wish it were twice the length.
Other equally short features are on "Exploding Charlotte" (can a Jerry Bruckheimer film NOT have a bonus feature on pyrotechnics?), "Steal a National Treasure" (how they came up with the idea), "On the Set of American History" (cast/crew talking about how it feels to be so close to history), "National Treasure On-Location" (behind-the-scenes footage), and "The Templar Knights" (a very brief and incomplete primer on them and the Masons).
The menu screen itself is pretty nifty, with one of the lenses from Ben Franklin's glasses the cursor that moves to highlight menu items. I've seen menus where you couldn't tell what was being highlighted, and so this is a real pleasure. But with Blu-rays, what looks cool often takes twice as long, and that's the complaint here. It's a little slow. Same with the Trivia Track, which employs the same lens technique. You have to wait up to 30 seconds for another lens to pop up and finish a thought or sentence. It's not a very good track for the impatient, and for that matter, it's not a very good track period. All of the info is the kind of stuff an intern could Google. There's nothing here that shows any serious research.
Bottom Line:
"National Treasure" is everything you'd want from a popcorn movie. It's light romance, light comedy, light PG action violence, and a light romp through American history. But that's all it set out to be. In the cinematic world of cipher-quest-adventures, I'd rate "Raiders of the Lost Ark" a 10, "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" a 5, and "National Treasure" a 7. Though if I could have gotten into the spirit of the whole thing, I would have put those numbers into a cipher and led you to a few of Dean or John's reviews to get my final rankings!
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]23391[/release]