Who's in It:
Nicolas Cage, Justin Bartha, Diane Kruger, Jon Voight, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris, Harvey Keitel, Bruce Greenwood
The Basics: Cage hunts for a lost city of gold hidden in Mt. Rushmore. The best part happens when they finally open up the door to the lost city and 12-year-old Sean Astin and Corey Feldman pop out.
What's the Deal? This movie is so dumb (apologies to Sean, Corey and the rest of the awesome Goonies that I even referenced it above I know the Goonies and you, NT: BOS, are no Goonies) that it can't even adequately explain why Cage has to find the lost gold city (unless I got up to pee during that part). It has something to do with him having to prove that his great-great-grandfather didn't help John Wilkes Booth assassinate Lincoln. But honestly, it doesn't matter. I refuse to hold not-making-sense against it. I had too much fun to be all film-critic about it. If I had one beef, it's that there was no supergenius monkey helping them find the secret cave entrance.
Who Do You Want to See Swinging on a Rope Over a Treacherous Crevice? Helen Mirren, that's who! And she does, after she and everyone else does this nutty balancing act on a huge tilty platform that's disintegrating over the treacherous crevice in the cave where the city of gold that's also about to flood and drown them all and maybe also entomb them is. Seriously, why don't movies like this happen every week? After Ghost Rider and Next and now this one, why isn't Cage the President of Hollywood yet? Why is everything else so boring? When will he make a film with a supergenius monkey?!
Also, You'll Want to Know About Cage's Hair and Teeth and Insane Acting Technique Where He Likes to Yell About Stuff: The hair is at a point now where it doesn't move much, but also doesn't distract you with its strange fake qualities, so you'll hardly notice it. The teeth are big but also minimally ostentatious. The yelling is totally on-point.
Book-Themed Movies It Could Beat Up With One Hand Tied Behind Its Back: Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, The Ten Commandments, 84 Charing Cross Road.