‘National Treasure’ is the Only Movie You Need to Watch Today

If you googled “movies to watch on the Fourth of July” today, first of all, I hope you clicked on the article I wrote for that exact search. Secondly, I need you to know that your search is over because the best Fourth of July film is obviously National Treasure.

That 2004 adventure film—written by Jim Kouf and the Wibberleys and directed by Jon Turteltaub—is the perfect Fourth of July movie for a lot of reasons. First, it’s streaming on Netflix. I love you, Independence Day, but I’m also not about to drop $4 to rent you on Amazon Prime. Second, it’s silly enough that those of us who are feeling less-than-patriotic in America in 2019 won’t feel guilty about endorsing any subliminal pro-military messages á la Top Gun, nor will we feel depressed about letting Steve Rogers down á la Captain America.  Third, it’s honest-to-god a pretty good film.

Look. Originally this was going to be a post dedicated to my ironic love of the ridiculous and objectively bad film, National Treasure. But folks, I can’t lie to you. My love for National Treasure is anything but ironic. I rewatched way more of it than I needed to write this article, simply because I love it that much. But in order to join me in this unironic love of National Treasure, you must first accept a few admittedly hard-to-accept things, such as Nicolas Cage as a sexy historian named Benjamin Franklin Gates who steals the Declaration of Independence. I know. I know. Stay with me.

Ben Gates steals the Declaration because he believes there is a map on the back of the document that will lead to a treasure his family has been hunting down for generations, though Ben seems to be the only one who’s made any progress at all. Christopher Plummer (who is, in fact, in this movie) plays Ben’s treasure-hunting enthusiast grandfather, while Jon Voight plays Ben’s cynical father who wants no part of the family legacy.

Where exactly did this treasure come from? It’s extremely unclear. Christopher Plummer calls it “a treasure that had been fought over for centuries by tyrants, pharaohs, emperors, and warlords,” and the visuals seem to suggest the Roman Empire, so maybe there? The point is, somehow the American Free Masons got a hold of the treasure and hid it from the British, leaving behind a series of clues only they could understand. Now if and only if you can accept all of the above nonsense, then you are ready to enjoy National Treasure and the gems it has to offer.

Throughout the movie, Nic Cage swaggers around in a button-up tucked into blue jeans paired with a bold belt like some sort of Indiana Jones of American history. Love it. Justin Bartha scampers behind him in his Hey-I’m-a-nerd glasses (even though they are both clearly nerds!), cracking the most obvious one-liner in any given situation, but somehow making it funny. Love it. Diane Kruger shows up as the inexplicably hot German blonde from the National Archives, and Nicolas Cage treats her like dirt despite her position of authority and importance. Love. It.

Don’t even get me started on the heist scene in National Treasure. I mean, stealing the fingerprint from a champagne glass? Anagramming the security password based on which letters had been pressed the most on the keyboard? Buying the fake Declaration souvenir from the gift shop and swapping it out with the real one? This is brilliant stuff, people.

And let’s not forget the many valuable American history lessons National Treasure has for its viewers, thanks to Ben’s insufferable habit of blurting out trivia the second anyone gives him an opening. Thanks to this movie, millennials everywhere know that Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals. Is that useful information to have? Not really, but it is true, and therefore educational!

Personally, I can’t think of a better way to spend this Fourth of July than watching this ridiculous film and having the time of my life. Who’s with me?

Watch National Treasure on Netflix