Welcome to another edition of Movie Review Monday!

This week's film is the 2004 action adventure National Treasure, starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Bean.

The plot surrounds a secret treasure that has been hidden for hundreds of years, with clues to its location scattered throughout the United States on historical artifacts, put there by the Founding Fathers (among others). It's up to Benjamin Franklin Gates (Cage) and his team of historians to track it down before Cage's evil ex-partner Ian Howe (Bean) gets to it.

What I like about this movie is that it is a unique combination of elements. It's a historical action movie with aspects of Indiana Jones, and Ocean's Eleven. While it has some cool historical aspects to it, the depth is pretty shallow so it focuses mostly on the fun of it all. While I wish there was more historical influences, the movie is simple, silly, and fun, which is all that is ever really warranted of a movie experience as far as I'm concerned.

I had felt like I'd seen the movie before from it's repeated airings on cable and references from other things, but finally sitting down to watch it in it's entirety was nice. You can sort of check your brain at the door and just have some simple fun. It didn't challenge any of my expectations of it, and it could have been better, but it is a watchable and enjoyable movie.

Check out National Treasure streaming right now on Netflix.

Thanks for stopping by!