“Mr. Car and the Knights Templar” is a Polish mash-up of “Indiana Jones,” “National Treasure” “DaVinci Code” and “The Goonies,” a treasure hunt mystery with clues and ancient artifacts with “the power to change the course of history.”
It’s a daffy but generally dull and childish adaptation of Zbigniew Nienacki’s novel, a writer who threw in a magical Bond-mobile/”Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang” vehicle for good measure.
The task of pulling these dispirate, franchise-sized plot elements and this populous cast into a coherent narrative with fun action beats proves too much for director and co-writer Antoni Mykowski, who bites off more than he can chew for his feature film debut.
A promising opening, with our hero, the art historican Tomek (Mateusz Janicki) fighting a caped, gaucho-chapeau’d South American knife fighter (Jacek Beler) and others in a lighthouse and through the Baltic Sea in search of the Cross of de Molay, ends rather anti-climactically. Tomek escapes his rivals, drives his gadgetized 1960s SUV across the Baltic only to dive overboard and promptly pick-up the relic.
That sets the tone for this late-’60s period piece — big build-ups, blandly-disappointing pay-offs. And often, even the “build-up” gets lost in exposition, infighting and “National Treasure/DaVinci” style over-explaining “history” lessons.
Tomek’s a treasure hunter for the Polish National Museum, and recovering that cross — with clues embedded in its gold casting — is supposed to be merely the beginning. It’s not even that.
There’s another cross. There’s a “contest” to find it sponsored by a treasure collector (Anna Dymna), a reporter (Sandra Drzymalska) who thinks “Why do people hunt for treasure?” (dubbed, or in Polish with subtitles) would be a great idea for a story, the martial-artist daughter (Maria Debska) of a rival treasure hunter and three kids from a coed anti-Russian/anti-“Red” scout camp, kids who go by the “code names” of Squirrel (Kalina Kowalczuk), Mentor (Piotr Sega) and Eagle Eye (Olgierd Blecharz)
Kids, treasure hunters and the expert relate bits of Knights Templar and Medieval European history and factoids that help them get into or out of messes, as this ungainly and unlikely sextet team up for their quest.
“According to American scientists, one out of every ten drivers could be a serial killer” really ruins one’s hitchhiking experience.
The guy they code-name “Mr. Car” because of obvious reasons has a moment or two of decent derring do, including a cutesy sexual-position “escape” masterminded by the sexy martial artist in a Twiggy bob (Debska). But the kids are cute and nothing more, the reporter is set decoration and the “car” features lame gadgets, even for a tale set in the ’60s.
And the payoff is allegorically obvious.
One can appreciate the effort and expense here and still say it’s rubbish because sometimes effort is simply wasted.
Rating: TV-14, violence, sexual situation
Cast: Mateusz Janicki, Sandra Drzymalska, Maria Debska, Jacek Beler, Anna Dymna, Kalina Kowalczuk, Piotr Sega and Olgierd Blecharz
Credits: Directed by Antoni Nykowski, scripted by Bartosz Sztybor, and Antoni Nykowski, based on a novel by Zbigniew Nienacki. A Netflix release.
Running time:
Movie Nation 
This film has nothing to do with National Treasure. It might not be to your taste, but it’s a movie adaptation of a book from 1966. The Mr. Automobile books, of which there are 15, were written in the 1960s for children around 12. After the author died, another 148 novels were written by other authors.
In Poland they were so popular they were made into a TV series, and 5 movies so far.
The review mentions the book it was adapted from in the second paragraph. However, as the MOVIE came out over 50 years AFTER the novel, and film adaptation is a selective choosing of what to include and what to leave out of the MOVIE version, mentioning the story beats and plot elements that resemble OTHER recent and not-so-recent films, and using those analogies to help readers get an idea of what the movie is similar to, is a time-honored way to review a film. “It’s like this, so if you liked this, it might suit you.” The bad review has to do with the cluttered plot, violent villain who is little more than a costume, etc.