If we’re lucky, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is an indicator of what’s to come, and every segment of Fantasia will eventually be converted into a live action movie. One imagines that “Night on Bald Mountain” will be a family comedy about a camping trip on a treeless hill. Chernabog will either be an animatronic bear or the family dog. That would have about as much connection to the great Mickey Mouse segment from which this movie takes its name.
The way it goes is there are good wizards and bad wizards. Wizards, it turns out, aren’t really users of magic; they are just people born with the use of 100% of their brain and therefore able to mentally control atomic vibration and electromagnetic electricty or dross like that (nope, no magic here—vibration explains how people can be trapped on the other side of your reflection). Centuries ago, the most powerful bad wizard, Morgana (Alice Krige), killed Merlin (James A. Stephens), who had three apprentices: Horvath (Alfred Molina), who betrayed Merlin to Morgana; Veronica (Monica Bellucci), who sacrificed herself to defeat Morgana, and the third; Balthazar (Nicolas Cage), who captured them all in a Russian nesting doll for storage until such time as he could find the new Prime Merlinian, a wizard powerful enough to finally defeat Morgana once and for all.
© Walt Disney Pictures
Balthazar won’t age until his quest is complete, and so flash forward a millennium and it turns out that the Prime Merlinian is not in Greenwich, England, but rather in New York, in the form of Dave, a scrawny 20-year-old physics student played by Jay Baruchel. It should be noted that this is the second film in a row where Baruchel does battle with a dragon (the other being How to Train Your Dragon from Dreamworks Animation) so suddenly, my interest in his next movie is much heightened—as his next movie is an independent film Good Neighbours (originally titled Notre Dame de Grace), the story of the Quebec separatist movement in the 1990s, will be quite thrilling with a dragon involved.
As Balthazar is discovering that Dave is the (as yet unbeknownst) most powerful wizard of all, Dave accidentally releases Horvath from his prison. Horvath intends to use his new freedom to free Morgana as well and if that happens, she’ll do bad things that will bring about the end of the world. This, needless to say, is something Balthazar and Dave need to prevent. Oh, has it been mentioned that Dave has recently rediscovered his third grade sweetheart (Teresa Palmer)? Putting the moves on her will frequently complicate learning how to prevent the world from being destroyed. College-aged boys have priorities, after all.
Summer is not a time when the bar of expectation is set high for movies. Still, that is a hurdle that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice just barely clears in that there is nothing to point at and say, “that’s just too stupid.” The acting performances are fine if not remarkable. Jay Baruchal is likable and the events never ask us to buy him as a super action hero. Alfred Molina chews scenery as much as you’d expect, while Cage is actually more restrained than you’d respect (that’s a good thing).
© Walt Disney Pictures
The light comedy is on the lame side, but in a way that will probably appeal to a fair number of kids (nothing like a good plasma ball-to-the-crotch joke). The action sequences are competently crafted with quality CGI but without ever showing cleverness. One of the great bits in The Sword in the Stone is a Wizard’s Duel where Merlin and Madam Mim have to use wits to counteract each others’ spells. Several battle sequences in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice seem to be trying to capture that same energy, without success.
Sadly, one of the least effective moments is a tribute to the Fantasia segment that gave the movie its name. Unfortunately it is so literal and so protracted that it would have been better to have cut it altogether.
There are surely better things to spend your movie money on than something that is just barely tolerable, but at least The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is orders of magnitude better than the National Treasure movies, which also feature collaboration between Jerry Bruckheim, director Jon Turteltaub, and Nicolas Cage.
- Wide release on Friday, July 16, 2010.
- Directed by Jon Turteltaub.
- Written by Lawrence Konner, Mark Rosenthal, Matt Lopez, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard.
- Starring Jay Baruchel, Nicolas Cage, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer.
- Rated PG for fantasy action violence, some mild rude humor and brief language.
- Running time: 112 minutes.
- Alex’s rating: 5 out of 10.
