What exactly can be said about the second "National Treasure" film that wasn't already said about the first "National Treasure" film? That it's completely ridiculous? That it's typical Jerry Bruckheimer low-brow garbage? That it's reflective of an era where science has been tossed out the window in favor of conspiracy theories, assumption, and mysticism?

Benjamin Gates (Nicolas Cage) isn't so much a scientist as he is a mystic. All he has to do is look at something and he instantly understands it. He doesn't have to explain anything he does because everything he does is right, otherwise he and all the people around him would be dead.

In this film (I don't even remember what the first one was about), Gates is trying to clear the good name of his great great grandfather, who supposedly decoded a cipher around the time of Lincoln's assassination. Anyway, who cares. Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris) implicates the Lincoln-era Gates, prompting Ben, his father (Jon Voight), Abigail (Diane Kruger), Riley (Justin Bartha), and Ben's mother (Helen Mirren), to run off searching for evidence, which is apparently located in some Native American lost city of gold.

Factually, there's nothing more to comment on since the actual details in the movie don't matter. The only point of the movie is that there's something out there and Ben has to find it. It doesn't really matter what it is. What does matter is that no matter what the mystery or puzzle, all Ben has to do is look at it and he solves it within seconds. For instance, Ben stands atop Mt. Rushmore, decodes something about rain being needed to reveal the entrance to the lost city, then proceeds to have everyone in his party dump their bottles of Aquafina on top of the rocks. Despite the obvious difference in the water in the water bottles to land mass ratio, they manage to wet just the right part of the mountain and find the entrance. It's this kind of crap that makes "National Treasure 2" more of a comedy than anything else.

The real sad thing about "National Treasure 2" is that this is probably what many Americans think of history and where some of them actually derive their knowledge.