REVIEW: 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' captures rare brand of Disney magic
FILM OPENS TODAY
Don’t tell my wife, but I love being wrong. At least when it comes to films.
I’ll admit it, I came to “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” prepared to hate it. It had all the hallmarks of a film that would rub me the wrong way — produced by explosive-style-over-substance Jerry Bruckheimer and starring hammy overactor Nicolas Cage. Yet throughout the film’s running time, the word I kept returning to again and again was “thrilling.”
Of all the Walt Disney properties, a sliver from the oft-maligned and just as often underestimated “Fantasia” would probably not make many peoples’ lists for an obvious feature-length adaptation. Yet somehow producer Bruckheimer and director Jon Turteltaub saw potential in a 10-minute-long segment about a lazy and unqualified wizard’s apprentice (Mickey Mouse) who, rather than employ elbow grease to clean his room, tires magic. The results were more than a little messy.
The filmmakers built a story centered around an immortal sorcerer named Balthazar Blake (Cage) who has spent centuries looking for a youth to inherit not only his wisdom and powers, but those of his late master, Merlin. That young man is Dave (Jay Baruchel, he with the big ears to fill), a New York University physics student who finds himself embroiled in an age-old quest to rid the world of Blake’s arch-nemesis, Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina), bent on world domination. As the unlikely and often reluctant protégé is given a crash course in magic, he’ll try desperately to survive his training, get the girl, and save New York City.
Director Turteltaub has a penchant for mythology (he directed the “National Treasure” films), and while his work rarely does it for me, he gets better the further from reality he gets.
Turns out Cage, who has spent the better part of a decade humiliating himself on film, has had a good year and now three good performances (including in “The Bad Lieutenant,” “Kick Ass”). As with his director, Cage is more enjoyable the farther he distances himself from normal. It has only been in playing extreme characters who give full rise to the actor’s quirks that he has finally found a means to thrive.
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” skips the whole “homage” debate by mimicking scenes from your favorite movies and then letting you know it knows that you know.
There are also fun bits hinting at but never quite invoking Clark's Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Sorcery in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is simply science beyond our ken, leading to a great retort in the film’s climactic battle.
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is not a particularly great film. But it is a surprisingly satisfying one. An epic comedy adventure, it is chock-full of great effects and unexpectedly dramatic circumstances.
The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Monica Bellucci, Teresa Palmer, Toby Kebbell
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Theaters: Hollywood, Tinseltown, Carmike, Cinemark, Chapel Hills
Rated: PG (for fantasy action violence, some mild rude humor and brief language)
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
GRADE: B+
