National Treasure: Book of Secrets A Movie Review	MPAA Rated - PG It's 2:10 Long A Review by The Dude on the Right

Nicolas Cage is back as Ben Gates. It’s bad enough that he and Abigail (Diane Kruger) are on the skids, now there is documentation that hints that his great great grandfather was responsible for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Dad Gates, Patrick (Jon Voight), is beside himself, so Ben finds himself in familiar territory – trying to restore the good name of his family, and to do so he of course needs the help of his trusty sidekick, Riley (Justin Bartha).

Surprise, surprise, the used-to-be missing page from the John Wilkes Booth diary, the one that implicates great great grandpa, has a code hidden on it, and our heroes find themselves traveling across the pond to Paris and London, then back again to the good old United States, on a quest to find the lost City of Gold (but aren’t they all?) Doing so will substantiate the story grandpa Gates told Dad Gates, who in turn told it to Ben.

Abigail, always liking a good treasure hunt, is back along for the ride, and this time, since one of the clues has to do with an old American Indian language, Mom Gates, Emily (Helen Mirren) finds herself wrapped up and in danger since she is an expert at deciphering the old language. And why is there danger? Because someone else also wants to find the lost City of Gold, namely Mitch Wilkinson, who at times seems like a sinister, evil person, but at other times just seems to want his own family to have a decent legacy, like finding a city of gold. And why "Book of Secrets?" Because one of the clues to finding the city resides in a secret book that Presidents hand down to the next President. It’s a secret book because only the President is supposed to read it, and it has all of the secrets we want answers to like the JFK assassination, the truth about Area 51, the missing Watergate tapes, and in our case, the missing clue to the City of Gold. So, sure, Ben has one option to look at the book and that’s to kidnap the President (Bruce Greenwood), although he really doesn’t kidnap the dude, Ben just leads him through a secret passageway at Mount Vernon.

I guess the easiest way to put this is that if you liked the first "National Treasure" you’ll probably like the "Book of Secrets" version, although I thought "Book of Secrets" dragged a little more than the original even though they technically clock in at about the same length. The addition of Helen Mirren was fun, Jon Voight does a great job as the Dad, and Riley is still his sarcastic self, given a moment again when he knows something Ben and Abigail don’t. Nicolas Cage is perfect in his role again, especially in the scene where he pretends to be drunk in Buckingham Palace, and hey, I’m a Diane Kruger stalker so there’s nothing bad I can say about her, only wishing I had the role of Connor in the movie.

The premise and quest in "Book of Secrets" is even more preposterous than the lost treasure in the original film, but hey, you don’t go to a "National Treasure" movie looking for something realistic, do you? I didn’t, I liked it, and give "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" 3 ½ stars out of 5. It would have been 4 stars, and I’m not sure exactly what you could cut, but the movie seemed about 15 minutes too long. Oh well, you get exactly what you will expect, and they set up the sequel by having Ben scope out page 47 in the Book of Secrets thanks to the President. Yay!

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!