“They ripped off The Rock”

National Treasure: Edge of History, already got on my bad side in the first minute by ripping off one of the best jail cell escapes in modern movies. I’m talking about when Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage escape in “The Rock”.

Now, I get it. Cage. National Treasure. Bruckheimer. National Treasure.

But the latest show from Disney Plus can’t emulate the excitement of the National Treasure movies with it’s two episode premiere, instead, just coming off as a kiddie treasure hunt caper with some obnoxious stand ins.

Jess Valenzuela, is the undocumented daughter of an explorer father who she lost too soon. But not before inheriting his talents for discovering things others can’t see. She becomes intertwined in a scheme by an evil black market antiquities dealer and crypto queen named Billie, played by Catherine Zeta Jones (who needs to be rescued from this mess) and our National Treasure adventure is supposed to begin.

This cast isn’t any good and should be fired immediately. The writing is bad and its attempts to make me laugh are insulting. It’s already preachy when it has no equity with its audience. And it comes nowhere near the mystery solving, adventurous spirit of the films.

It makes me really miss Nicolas Cage.

It jokes about Catherine Zeta Jones being in Big Little Lies. I wish she were instead of this.

If you forced me to say anything nice about National Treasure: Edge of History is that its a good looking show. Baton Rouge is presented nicely. There are times when it looks more like a recent Fast and Furious film but we need something to latch on to here because so little of this works.

I don’t know what to do with this show. Let’s hope something rises and can inspire something exciting. It’s off to a really dreadful start.