National Treasure: Edge Of History review — insufferable reboot is a basic cringe-fest-Josh Stephenson-Entertainment – Metro

Lisette Alexis stars in the latest instalment (Picture: Christophe Bayle)

National Treasure: Edge Of History wants to be that achingly cool banker – a teen-focused entertainment property – but, tragically, it’s dialogue was quite clearly written by a 60-year-old who spent far too much time on Urban Dictionary looking up TikTok slang. And so instead comes off as clichéd, trite and, lord have mercy, basic.

How else can you explain why these early twenty-somethings are babbling on about ‘shipping’ and ‘stanning’ like it’s 2015, going viral with a TikTok dance and decrying the patriarchy in the exact same tone of the Twitter thread of your nightmares.

Yes, folks, we’ve got a bunch of Gen Z people as written by people who only know about them from Piers Morgan, and they’re all absolutely insufferable.

It’s a shame as this TV reboot of National Treasure, the Nicolas Cage film where he planned to steal the Declaration of Independence, does fleetingly capture some of the original’s hokey magic. It’s packed full of daft conspiracies, historical mumbo jumbo and riddles to solve – just like the original.

Cage is out and replaced by relative newcomer Lisette Alexis as Jess Valenzuela, a Mexican immigrant who lost her treasure hunter father when she was an infant to a fatal case of massive explosion, but not before he passed on a necklace that holds the secret to an ancient mystery.

Jess actually makes for an engaging lead, a gifted puzzle-solver wasting away her talents at a storage centre until a chance encounter with retired FBI agent Peter Sadusky (Harvey Keitel, reprising his role from the film) sets her – and her stupid friends – off an adventure they are wholly unprepared for.

Don’t expect them to do it quickly however. Episodes drag on interminably with revelations being parsed out fleetingly in favour of some pretty tedious love triangle stuff between Jess, her flatmate Ethan (Jordan Rodrigues) and Liam (Jake Austin Walker), the estranged grandson of Peter Sadusky trying to make it as a country-and-western singer.

In fairness, I can see why it takes Jess so long to decide because choosing between wet-blanket Ethan and multiple-generations-of-daddy-issues Liam is scarier than any of people trying to hunt her down.

Lisette and Jake Austin Walker (Picture: Christophe Bayle)

On that note, the show’s camp villain quota is filled to bursting by Catherine Zeta-Jones who plays Billie Pearce, a cryptocurrency boss bitch who is 90 per cent blonde bob and 10 per cent spouting weird quotes that don’t make too much sense in or out of context.

After four episodes it’s hard to tell if Zeta-Jones is giving the worst performance of her life or if she’s actually the best thing about this.

The chances of us sticking around to find out, however, is a mystery anyone could solve.

Out now on Disney +

Entertainment – MetroRead More