Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: National Treasure

This is topic National Treasure in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Greg Davis (Member # 2687) on 11-19-2004, 03:39 AM:

Epitomy of the melodrama. could have been finished in 45 minutes, dragged along a lot.

some parts were really lame, like when they were walking on ice and [puke]

spoiler? maybe? [puke]

and found the bell of the ship that had its friggin name on it, and in the next scene had 5 days of digging already done with ice axes (tip - ice tools are for climbing. no ice climbing was done. rarely are one of these seen without a 9.0mm ice rope and harness w/ice screw attatchments, but hey, axes are cool). Then they got inside, opened some old freaking cans and said "gunpowder" about 5 times so you probably wouldnt lose track of that, you nkow, maybe coming into play later. fun movie though, i didnt expect much and it had some cool stuff to look at

right up there with dudley doo right.

3.5/5

Posted by Rich Granata (Member # 2285) on 11-19-2004, 09:38 AM:

I have the same opinion. I thought that it was going to "blow chunks". I was very suprised at how entertained I was. It's basic Jerry Brickheimer. As long as you ignore all the discontinuity and 3rd grader dialog, you will enjoy it like I did.

I will warn however, that there are many things in the film that are complete fantasy. Any document that old would immediately fall apart in ones hands. I dont want to give away the end but I could go on and on and on and on. But, thats what it is. The movie was not meant to be realistic. Take the family. Its a somewhat long but fun adventure.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 11-19-2004, 04:43 PM:

This movie is so bad in every way (except the blonde actress) it only deserves one sentence.

Posted by Matt Kerekes (Member # 2777) on 11-22-2004, 01:08 AM:

I definitely recommend this movie to anyone easily entertained. Whether or not they were true, I really enjoyed the historical references and trivia, and yes the blonde chick was hot! We took our 2 month old baby, not that she could comprehend, but she was wide-eyed through the whole movie trying to take in all the lights and movement on the screen. [Eek!]

Posted by Dean Kollet (Member # 1789) on 11-23-2004, 05:18 PM:

did they read the DaVinci code or what? It's very smiliar...
but it's an entertaining movie....fun and enjoyable...

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-23-2004, 05:32 PM:

Bad reviews notwithstanding, this movie has probably had better word-of-mouth among our patrons than any in recent memory. It doesn't matter if it makes historic sense or whatever. The important thing is, it's a good "popcorn movie" and people are looking to be entertained.

Posted by John Anastasio (Member # 607) on 11-26-2004, 09:17 PM:

Yeah, the boat scene was complete hocum, including the explosion that somehow blows the sh*t out of the sh*p but not Penn and B, who then conveniently walk nine miles on the ice to the local village..but hey, it's not a documentary. It was slow up front, but picked up nicely. It reminded me of a mixture of DaVinci Code and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Being from the ham in the sandwich between Philadelphia and New York, I enjoyed all the local scenes. New Jersey even gets a cute mention. I think Justin Bartha makes a delightfully geeky sidekick. By the way, vellum doesn't fall apart after 200 years. I've got a 500 year-old piece of it here in my office and you can still roll it up. It had a lot of scientific inaccuracies, though...like seeing stuff through filtered glasses,even though there aren't any colors...or somehow managing to light oil torches that have been sitting around for 200 years. I still found it entertaining. The showing at the AMC Hamilton 24 was up to their usual high standards and the 6:00 show was packed to the rafters. It's surprising how many audiences there applaud at the end of a film.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-27-2004, 07:19 PM:

OK, being glamorous and blonde allows you to get your PhD aged about 22 and then walk into a senior curatorial job in your country's main national public archive. Maybe I'm just jealous (I didn't get mine until I was 26, and six years after that I'm working in a small regional archive) but I have a little bit of trouble believing that. I don't know anyone in a middle to senior curatorial post at our National Archives (formerly Public Record Office) aged under 50, and most of them are male! Then there is the issue of the Brits being the villians. Admittedly we may have been around the time of the Boston Tea Party, but surely things have moved on a bit since then. And in this case the anti-British/European stereotypes weren't even funny (as they were, say, with Alan Rickman in Die Hard).

Obviously the big area of interest around this film for me was its depiction of archives and archivists. If only I had a 'conservation room' with a fraction of the high tech gizmos as the one shown in this film! But if it encourages people to get interested in what we do and how the stuff we preserve is relevant and interesting (be it published documents like the Declaration of Independence, unpublished paper archives, photographs, moving image or audio recordings) then I guess the film will have done some good. But on the whole I really didn't like those stereotypes.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 11-28-2004, 12:13 AM:

Today, Regal Cinema World 8 in Eugene, 7PM, House #4, attendance maybe 125. The print was flawless and the onscreen image quality was as good as 35mm ever seems to get (to my eyes anyway). Very bright, sharp, steady, loads of detail. Good sound too. [thumbsup]

This is pure fluff. It makes little sense and some of the stuff that happens is preposterous, but I found that I didn't care about any of that because I was very entertained. The audience seemed to enjoy it a lot. This one might have legs if the word of mouth is good. A fun time at the movies.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 11-28-2004, 09:14 PM:

Yawn. [sleep]

I suppose you could do worse than this, though.

Oh, and the presentation that I saw sucked, too.

Posted by Robert L. Fischer (Member # 2424) on 11-29-2004, 12:27 AM:

You can't really go wrong with this movie. Sure, a few parts are laughable, and the scenarios are more than just a little far-fetched. But even if you want nothing more than to just hate the movie (like my indie-snob ass did), you'll find yourself more than just a little entertained. The fact that I didn't get bored at all was impressive given its fairly long running time.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 11-29-2004, 11:05 AM:

quote: David Stambaugh
Today, Regal Cinema World 8 in Eugene, 7PM, House #4, attendance maybe 125. The print was flawless and the onscreen image quality was as good as 35mm ever seems to get (to my eyes anyway). Very bright, sharp, steady, loads of detail. Good sound too.

Always let theatres know when you are pleased with their presentation quality! A letter to the theatre manager and others higher up in the circuit gives good positive reinforcement to a job well done. [Cool]

New discussion thread about positive reinforcement here:

http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f1/t006751.html