NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS (Rated PG)

While we are waiting around for Harrison Ford to return as Indiana Jones, it’s not so bad to watch an imitator about half his age taking on the role of a globe-trotting adventurer in search of treasure.

Nicolas Cage is no low-rent Indy, considering that he established himself nicely as treasure hunter Ben Gates in “National Treasure,” which had the salutary effect of making American history a lot more fun than one would ever imagine possible when measured against the average high school history textbook.

However, while the “National Treasure” films have no real educational value as history lessons, it is probably an article of faith for unwary filmgoers that the Masons have buried treasure maps within many of our most treasured national monuments. After all, it’s more fun to think some mysterious group holds the keys to deeply concealed secrets.

“National Treasure: Book of Secrets” is more than willing to push heavy doses of fictional history in service of advancing an interesting story. In its efforts to make history alive and vital, this sequel expands the story into a global adventure, but not before opening up with a flashback to the assassination of Abe Lincoln.

Nicolas Cage returns as Ben Gates, assisted by his father, university professor Patrick Gates (Jon Voight), and the mission is much more personal.

The father and son team are shaken by the discovery of one of the long-lost pages from the diary of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth. The diary was found on Booth’s body when he was killed, but several pages that had been torn from the diary had never been found until now.

Surprisingly, the information on a recovered page seems to implicate their ancestor Thomas Gates as a conspirator in the plot to kill Lincoln.

Of course, we know this is bogus right from the start, since the evidence has been brought forward by highly suspect Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris), whose efforts to uncover his family history oddly seem to require the services of menacing henchmen.

Meanwhile, Ben has to reassemble his crack team of history investigators, which is complicated by the fact that he’s now estranged from his old flame, American history archivist Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger). Ben’s tech-wiz partner Riley Poole (Justin Bartha) is game for the mission, considering that his Ferrari has just been impounded for unpaid taxes.

For reasons not to be fully explained here, the story takes Ben and his crew to foreign locales, starting with a quick trip to Paris where a replica of the Statue of Liberty provides a coded message in one of its inscriptions. Then the gang is off to England where the mission becomes much more daunting, particularly when Ben has to sneak into the Queen’s private quarters at Buckingham Palace. A dazzling street chase occurs in London, which is hard to believe because gridlock is a constant in this capital city.

Having retrieved a clue from Queen Elizabeth’s desk, Ben takes the action back to Washington, D.C., where the objective becomes the need to find another clue from a matching desk that is only found in the White House.

At some point, it becomes necessary for Ben to call for help from his mother, linguistics professor Emily Appleton (Helen Mirren), as only she can translate the clues written in an obscure Native American dialect. Before heading off on an archaeological hunt in the vicinity of Mount Rushmore, there’s also the small matter of the abduction of the president of the United States (Bruce Greenwood).

By the way, the presidential kidnapping brings into focus what the “Book of Secrets” is all about. Tapping into the conspiracy theory mindset, this supposed secret book is for the eyes only of the president, and it turns out to be some sort of historical scrapbook that holds top secret letters and documents. Naturally, Ben needs something that’s in the secret book, if only because the story is so improbable that it serves the plot to have him chasing after something that should be absolutely unattainable.

Notwithstanding its essential silliness, “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” has a surprisingly large number of high-caliber cast members, certainly more than the plot warrants. The film also benefits from plenty of humor that helps to distract from the thin plot. Action sequences kick in with enough punch to keep everything lively.

Simply put, “National Treasure” may not shine as bright the second time around, but there’s plenty of adventure and fun to keep audiences flocking to this sequel.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

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