Comfortably embracing
self-parody, Cage plays a wide-eyed do-gooder who springs into action when his
great-great-grandfather is slandered as a conspirator in a plot to kill Abraham
Lincoln. Teaming up with dad Jon Voight, ex-girlfriend Diane Kruger, and
incongruously non-geeky geeky sidekick Justin Bartha (the only computer nerd in
film history who could moonlight as an underwear model), Cage follows a trail
of clues that lead him to Buckingham Palace, then the White House, and finally
to Mount Vernon, where he must kidnap the President (Bruce Greenwood) in order
to find a book of Presidential secrets and a lost city of gold. Then things
start to get a little silly.
It's a measure of the
film's infectious goofiness that Cage seems altogether more interested in
clearing the name of a long-dead ancestor than in finding a city of gold. The
film affords him some excellent opportunities to unleash his inner ham,
particularly during an epic freak-out at Buckingham Palace and an animated
argument about Lincoln's death with a small boy at a White House Easter-egg
hunt. Screenwriters Cormac and Marianne Wibberley seem
to be challenging themselves to cram as many hilariously convoluted,
over-the-top twists into the film as they possibly can; it must be awfully
liberating never having to worry about plausibility or realism. Still, given
its two-hour-plus running time, Secrets could easily lose 20 minutes, especially
once it runs out of energy toward the end. But it's fun, goofy, and fleet
enough to merit a third go-round. Heck, maybe in the next adventure, Cage could
uncover a conspiracy involving a bunch of pagan bitches and their evil plot to
reap a rich honey harvest. That premise is a proven laugh-getter, albeit of the
unintentional variety.
