... IF they had added one word to the title to make it
National Treasure: Presidents' Book of Secrets.
But It's Still 'Just a Movie'
That's one of the problems with movies 'nowadays' (we say in the grumpy-old-man vernacular)—people don't take movies as "just movies" anymore. That's probably
why Bruckheimer didn't name the movie "'Presidents'' Book of Secrets" ... because then it would be seen as 'another conspiracy-theory movie,' and that's not what it was.
It was another 'Indiana Jones'—which itself was another patch in the great fabric of George Lucas's history. (George Lucas has a place reserved in Jerry Bruckheimer's heaven.)
But the movie
needed the conspiracy-theory to make it 'realer than Disney's Utopia.' I can tell, because my friend--who fell asleep during the conspiracy-theorizing beginnings of the movie (we went to a late showing, and he had been up since 5:45 that morning), and who is experienced enough to say "been there, done that" to most conspiracy-theory--complained about the movie's fantastic idiocy most of the drive home.
Bruckheimer's Set-Up Makes the Unbelieveable Acceptable
One instance of otherwise-unbelievable events stands out: when Ben Gates gets his lady-friend to take him to the White House Easter-egg-roll, they use her Secret Service guy-friend to sneak into the Oval Office. By knocking him unconscious and stealing his keys? No; By bribing him with a night with the lady-friend and all the money he could imagine? No!
Ben and lady-friend go up to the agent, comment that lady-friend had always wanted to be inside the Oval Office and then
DARE the agent to sneak them in ("Awwh, betcha couldn't! Betcha couldn't! Neener-neener-nee-nerrr!)
Any Secret Service agent
who wanted to keep his job would have--the second he saw lady-friend, before she or Ben started talking--gone to 'secure' the President and/or his family! Were there any examples of professional government-workers? Not that
I saw!
The Bad Thing? Bruckheimer's Film-Making is So Good that Government-Workers Will Think That's How Things Are Actually Done!
You might think I'm brown-nosing there--and maybe I am, a little ... a part in a Bruckheimer movie is
bound to come with massive royalties (both in terms of any percentage of the cash
and in terms of the massively-good karma!)--but that's also a comment on the general intellect of the masses—how much did you care about 'Global Warming' before
An Inconvenient Truth? And how much after (especially if you never saw it)?
Now, just imagine if a
good film-maker had been involved! Actually, don't; if you do, 'Global Warming' might be revealed as the extremist farce it actually is! (I know that 'there's all kinds of "evidence" that "the ocean levels are rising," "the seals are suffocating" and "the forests are in flames"; but nature has a way of always balancing things out, and humans have a way of always finding the above-water end of the balance.)
The message
we think needs to be continuously put in movie-after-movie: people survive!