Writing reviews of some of these films can be really difficult people.  For instance, I’ve been struggling with writing a review for ‘Half Nelson’ for a couple of weeks now because it’s such an unconventional film.  You see ‘Half Nelson’ isn’t the kind of film you ‘love’ or ‘hate’ as it kind of just sits you in front of a window of some dudes life and asks you to observe.  Then there’s absolute garbage like ‘The DaVinci Treasure’ which pretty much write themselves.  It’s a sad thing in our society when it’s easier to lob grenades than to toss praise, but it’s also a sad thing in our society that there’s movies around like the ‘The Da Vinci Treasure’.

If you’re not familiar with the works of The Asylum, the little film studio that released ‘The Da Vinci Treasure’, allow me to educate you slightly.  The Asylum rushes video releases out to coincide with some big studio’s theatrical release.  So when ‘Snakes on a Plane’ hit theaters, the Asylum hit us with ‘Snakes on a Train’ (I honestly thought this one was joke – it ain’t). Pirates of the Caribbean?  How about Pirates of Treasure Island.  The Omen?  How about ‘666: The Child’.  So to coincide with the release of what I thought was the most boring movie of 2006 ‘The Da Vinci Code’, the Asylum comes with ‘The Da Vinci Treasure’.  Upon receiving ‘The Da Vinci Treasure’ I was ready to write the headline, ‘It’s crappy, but at least it was better than the Da Vinci Code’.  But I had yet to see the movie though.  Now I that I have actually seen it, I can only write the headline ‘It’s Crappy’. 

Not to spend too much time on the plot, but C. Thomas is Michael Archer, a low rent Indiana Jones archeologist who steals priceless artifacts.  The film opens with Archer

wearing night goggles as he sneaks into some dudes house.  The problem with the night goggle thing is that the place is fairly well lit, and like you can see everything pretty well with regular old eyesight, but then we wouldn’t have the cool, looking 'through the night goggle' effect.  Michael is chasing some treasure attempting to reach it before evil archeologist Dr. John Coven (Lance Henrickson) gets it.  The key to this treasure happens to be The Shroud of Turin, which of course is the blanket that Jesus was laid before he resurrected himself.  Things start to get stupid when Michael’s sexy archeologist partner Giulia (Nicole Sherwin) tells Mike that her Godfather the Cardinal may know where the shroud is located.  Though we may have thought the shroud is at the Vatican, but that one’s a fake.  The actual shroud is in a basement of the Cardinals church in California.  Go figure.

As Da Vinci sinks irrevocably into stupidness, the bad guys come to church and immediately pump the Cardinal full hot lead.  The heroes grab the shroud, which is not nearly as protected like, say, the Arc of the Covenant, toss it in laundry bag and flee.  Yes, a laundry bag.  Now the bad guys catch the good guys and take the laundry bag, but let them live.  Mind you, seconds ago they just killed a Catholic Cardinal for no reason but they let these clowns live.  This will lead our heroes to Afghanistan and beyond to find the Da Vinci Treasure.

Now one might question how in the hell did Leonardo Da Vinci manage to put a treasure map on the cloth that Jesus allegedly was wrapped in? Keep asking, because ‘The Da Vinci Treasure’ isn’t going let you know.  But the lameness of the narrative aside, the most annoying thing about ‘The Davinci Treasure’ was the constant cuts and zooms and freezes that went on through out the entire movie.  In one scene, our heroes were walking in a cave, and the camera zooms in and freezes on a stick.  A stick!  Why did they do this, I don’t know.  Gentlemen, you can’t put perfume on a pig.  Well, I guess you can put perfume on a pig, but all it does it make you wonder ‘Why in the hell did they put perfume on that pig?’  I mean the pig stank before, but now it’s stank mixed with perfume which equals double stank and draws your attention squarely to the stank. 

With the possible exception of Nicole Sherwins’ constantly heaving cleavage, there is nothing good about ‘The Da Vinci’ Treasure.  C. Thomas Howell and Lance Henrickson seem to be in competition to see who looks the scraggiest, the story is stupid to a fault, and the only entertainment value is from unintended humor.    Oh well, far be it from me to criticize the Asylum as they must be making cash on this stuff or they wouldn’t keep releasing it.  I’m sure we’ll be seeing an Asylum release called ‘Dreamgals’ or ‘The Pursuit of Lameness’.  I can’t freaking wait.