What to do if you can’t get the rights to turn Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code into a movie? If you’re Walt Disney Pictures, you strip it of religious concepts and make a Da Vinci Code knockoff in National Treasure, which doesn’t work hard enough with a wide-open premise.

Teaming with Con Air producer Jerry Bruckheimer for the fourth time, Nicolas Cage stars as Benjamin Gates, a third-generation treasure hunter, hopping the globe in search of a rumored bounty o’ historical booty buried by the nation’s founding fathers that his ancestors failed to find. When we meet him, he’s unearthing a pirate ship in the Arctic Circle. The boat doesn’t contain the goods, but merely another clue — one that, as he deciphers, suggests the map to said loot is printed in invisible ink on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

Upon this discovery, Gates is double-crossed by his partner, Howe (GoldenEye villain Sean Bean), who leaves him and wisecracking sidekick (Justin Bartha, The Hangover) for dead. Knowing that Howe will steal the priceless document and destroy it, Gates has no choice but to steal it in order to preserve it. In the film’s best set piece, he does, but unwittingly pulls National Archives hottie Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger, Inglourious Basterds) into the dangerous cat-and-mouse pursuit that results.

The hunt takes Gates and company clue by clue to all sorts of touristy stops in Washington, D.C. Somehow, despite having the FBI after him for the theft of the Declaration, he’s able to hang out at all these unguarded public places with ease. It’s a reminder of the pre-9/11 glory days when people could shoot guns at each other on the city streets and no one would bat an eye.

Although overlong, National Treasure somehow feels underwritten, partly because it tries to be too many things — heist, adventure, chase, action — doing better in some areas than others, yet not outright succeeding in any. It’s by no means bad; it just is. You may be entertained without being fully engaged. Director Jon Turteltaub (3 Ninjas) doesn’t do the enough with the clues and the codes, wasting too much of 131 minutes on repetitive getaways and close calls. This one squeaks by much the same.

In the end, Abigail presents Gates with a map to her vagina. —Rod Lott

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How appropriate for Frank Miller’s The Spirit to open with the image of a flatlining heart monitor, as his film is dead on arrival — an utterly lifeless, hollow shell. If Miller wanted to endear a whole new generation to Will Eisner’s comic creation, this $60 million feature was not the way to do it. Instead, this all but assures those unfamiliar with the source material that they will remain that way, that the original comics shall never touch their hands.

Too bad, because the virtually unknown Gabriel Macht (Behind Enemy Lines) is not a bad choice to fill the role and red tie of The Spirit, the masked-and-suited crimefighter formerly known as slain cop Denny Colt. He has the right look, the right attitude; he’s just in the wrong movie.

Tonally, The Spirit is an absolute misfire. Eisner’s comics had a slight streak of goofiness running through them, often with a sense of humor as sharp as the overall material often was dark, but never on the level of Three Stooges slapstick comedy, complete with cartoon sound effects lathered on with a dozen too many punches of the button. Miller even includes the dreaded “scratched record” effect, as if demonstrating in one misbegotten move how out-of-touch he is for such material.

The inert narrative involves the retrieval of a vase of the blood of Hercules, which supposedly will grant immortality to whomever partakes of its drops. Archenemy The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson, Marvel’s The Avengers) wants it; diamond thief Sand Serif (a stunningly sexy Eva Mendes, The Other Guys) has it. The Spirit chases both, while he also chases skirts. Nothing ever really happens to advance a plot, as if the entire thing were a MacGuffin; characters are abruptly introduced and given little to do beyond blighting the résumés of their actors. Macht is the only one who doesn’t embarrass himself (or us), whereas Jackson’s entire performance hinges on yelling and talking about how much he hates eggs.

You know what The Spirit needs? Well, a frickin’ grocery list of items, but color would have been nice. Eisner’s world popped with blues and reds and greens; Miller’s largely exists in shades of gray. Did Miller’s divorce from a colorist make him detest primary swatches? More or less co-opting the black-and-white-with-a-smidge-of-red palette from his own Sin City was not a wise decision. For one thing, this ain’t Sin City. For another, it makes Miller look like a one-trick pony, and one who’s already three hooves over the threshold of the glue factory at that.

As The Spirit not-so-memorably informs us in his opening monologue, his city screams. And boy, did I scream right along with it, in cinematic pain. —Rod Lott

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