I went to see National Treasure with the full understanding, perhaps even the hope, that it would be one of the most ridiculous movies I’d ever seen. Now, I only regret that I was one of the staggering number of people that made this the #1 movie in America for the second week in a row over Thanksgiving weekend. Yes, it was ridiculous; it was also poorly constructed, historically inaccurate, extremely offensive, and not fun enough to make up for any of it.

I knew the premise before I sat down to watch National Treasure, and it seemed absurd enough to be entertaining in and of itself — the Founding Fathers as invisible-map-making, treasure-hiding, super-hero masons? Ridiculous — and maybe awesome. What I didn’t realize is that all you need to find this invaluable treasure is an original copy of the Declaration of Independence (just sitting in the National Archives for anyone to steal), some lemon juice, a hair dryer, some absolutely impossible leaps in logic, and some duct tape in the back to shut up the blonde who’s following you around. Oh, and a few “bad guys” to race against. And voila! You’ve got the most valuable treasure in history — and a box office smash.

The basic premise is that the greatest treasure of all time makes its way from the Egyptian tombs through the Crusades and into the hands of the Founding Fathers who vow at all cost to keep it “out of the hands of the British.” So they hide the treasure, put an invisible map on the back of the Declaration of Independence, and leave other cryptic (i.e. only Nick Cage can decode them) clues to preserve its whereabouts. Over the years, the legend falls into obscurity and only the men of the Gates family continue to dedicate their lives to finding it. Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicholas Cage) is the end of the line. Once bad guy Ian Howe (Sean Bean) breaks away from the expedition, intent on stealing the treasure with his band of cronies, Ben Gates and his sidekick Riley are the only two left fighting the good fight to find and protect the treasure — until they drag Dr. Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) into things.

Dr. Abigail Chase gets swept into the action when she attempts to stop Ben Gates from stealing the Declaration, but it doesn’t take her long to give up the fight and become complacent to his command (although, as Ben expresses repeatedly, it sure is difficult to get her to shut up!) While Dr. Chase is presumably an intelligent woman with an important job in the government, she is treated like nothing more than a practical nuisance or a sexual object by the male figures she is surrounded by. She is referred to as “the girl” or as Ben Gates’ “girlfriend” more often than by her title and her only attribute that is constantly cited is her inability to keep quiet while the men are trying to figure things out. She is constantly spoken to like a toddler while she is waiting for Nicholas Cage to finally kiss her and, in the end, marry her (although neither character has been developed enough to merit a love story at all). I think Riley, the puppy-eyed, sarcastic sidekick, sums up Dr. Chase’s role best when he states at the end of the movie to Ben Gates: “At least you got the girl,” quickly adding “Go enjoy your spoils” (clearly including her in this category). By that point I was numbed not only by the unbelievably blatant sexism, but also by the ludicrous treasure-hunt itself.

Action, mystery, and adventure films often ask for a certain amount of suspension of disbelief in order to be successful; National Treasure expects us to overlook way too much in exchange for way too little. Maybe if anything else hadn’t been quite so bad — Nicholas Cage’s total lack of an acting job, a plot line full of gaping holes in history and logic, a female lead who is constantly degraded — I could have suspended my disbelief when Ben Gates made his obscure, somewhat random, but always correct leaps in logic, or pulled out his bottle of Aquafina to decode the final clue on a dollar bill. As things were, I didn’t like any of the characters enough to want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Rather than providing fun, action packed adventure, or even a good laugh, National Treasure simply stands out in my mind as a depressing display of what our nation will accept as a #1 film.