“Sorcerer” fails to cast spell over audience

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July 15, 2010

Sean McBride The Port Arthur News The Port Arthur News Thu Jul 15, 2010, 10:37 AM CDT

— The new movie, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is reportedly based on the eight-minute sequence from Disney’s “Fantasia” where Mickey Mouse gets into trouble by using magic to get his chores done. That’s a classic moment in both Disney animation and cinematic history, so it’s a bit sad that it should have inspired such a mediocre fantasy adventure seventy years later.

Still, nothing’s more magical to Mouse House executives than the opportunity to turn an old property into a lucrative new franchise, and so this movie was born. Nicolas Cage stars as Balthazar, an ancient wizard who once served Merlin. Balthazar is charged with protecting our world from evil forces and has spent the last 1300 years searching for the “Prime Merlinian,” a.k.a. a young person imbued with the power to defeat the forces of evil. In other words, a Chosen One, a la Harry Potter or a thousand other pint-sized adventure protagonists.

The Chosen One would appear to be the nerdy NYU student, Dave (Jay Baruchel). Dave is more interested in impressing his dream girl, Becky (Theresa Palmer) than in saving the world, but he eventually agrees to being trained by Balthazar as a sorcerer. It’s something of a crash course in wizardry, as the evil magician Horvath (Alfred Molina) is threatening at the gates.

That’s a pretty good idea for a story, but only if the filmmakers are willing to take the time to show Dave’s journey from geeky college kid to savior of our world. That’s impossible to pull off in an hour and forty minutes, so the filmmakers opt to concentrate on a series of special effects battles, some minor comedic moments and another oddball acting choice from Nicolas Cage.

In somewhat of a surprise, Cage is rather subdued here, leaving Molina to steal the show as the bad guy. Baruchel gets points by playing an improbably geeky hero, but it’s a one-note performance that never really gels with the rest of the cast. Even the special effects seem anti-climactic here, with the exception of a metallic eagle/gargoyle that comes to life for some nifty aerial sequences.

Other than that, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” never really takes off as a fantasy. For a film that is filled with one magical moment after another, it’s telling that there’s just not much magic to this mediocre family film.

Movie reviews by Sean, “The Movie Guy,” are published bi-weekly in “The Port Arthur News” and seen weekly on KFDM-TV and KBOI 2-TV. Sean welcomes your comments via email at smcbride@kboi2.com.

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