‘National Treasure: Edge of History’ adds a young-adult chapter to the movies

Review by Brian Lowry, CNN

Giving the “National Treasure” movies a young-adult spin, “National Treasure: Edge of History” transforms the franchise into a Disney+ series, one that offers the same playful approach to the past while weighing that down with tiresome relationship issues and a protagonist with her own Scooby gang. The opening episodes have their moments, but it’s less something to treasure than at best mildly enjoy.

Nicolas Cage starred in the 2004 movie and its sequel, a sort of discount “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The baton here passes to Lisette Olivera as Jess, a whip-smart Dreamer whose father, a protector of treasures, disappeared when she was a baby.

“Don’t you dare grow up to be like your papi,” her mom warns the infant, but of course she does when she’s reintroduced two decades later, stumbling upon an elaborate mystery with a little help from a retired FBI agent (played by Harvey Keitel, one of the conspicuous ties to the earlier movies).

Jess’ knack for identifying clues (she and her buddies are introduced playing an escape-room game) comes in handy in these real-life scenarios, with Catherine Zeta-Jones chewing up even more scenery than she devours in “Wednesday” as the evil antiquities dealer who is hot on her tail.

While it’s easy enough to like a series that dispatches the hero to Graceland seeking a historical tidbit that might involve Elvis Presley, “Edge of History” resides on the edge of tedium in the interactions between Jess and her nerdy friends, with the main exception being her pal Tasha (Zuri Reed), who actually provides plucky comic relief under these hard-to-fathom circumstances.

Cormac and Marianne Wibberley, who worked on the scripts for the original movies, developed this iteration of the concept, and they deserve some credit for essentially grafting this CW/Freeform-style variation onto the original, while including not only Keitel but an appearance by Justin Bartha, who co-starred, as helpful holdovers.

As the recent “Willow” reminds us, Disney has aggressively mined its movie library for titles that might lend themselves to streaming-series treatment, and “National Treasure,” with its episodic aspect as Jess must locate and crack new clues, perhaps works on that level better than most.

Yet while Olivera makes an appealing lead, the too-familiar romantic wrinkles and hormonal entanglements prove to be more of a distraction than an enhancement, leaving behind a series that resembles its papi just enough to be sporadically fun, but one that makes the trip to where X marks the spot feel that much longer.

“National Treasure: Edge of History” premieres December 14 on Disney+.

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