Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
I wouldn't go so far as to say I had high expectations for this latest pairing of director Jon Turtletaub and actor Nicolas Cage (they made two NATIONAL TREASURE movies, both of which I loathed), but I was intrigued by the idea of bringing the animated FANTASIA segment to life on some level and having Cage play a slightly unbalanced sorcerer who is driven by prophecy to train a young man (TROPIC THUNDER's Jay Baruchel) to become sorcerer enough to destroy a force that would destroy everything. While THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE has a few inspired moments peppered throughout its paint-by-numbers plot, most of the film is eye-gougingly average, with selected moments that are just plain awful.
The biggest disappointment is Cage himself, as Balthazar, who is, at times, relegated to playing straight man to Baruchel's Dave, a student of science having a near-impossible time accepting that he has been preordained to be the wizard that brings down a series of evil doers leading to the queen of evil, Morgana (Alice Krige). Not surprisingly, Cage doesn't exist well playing second fiddle, even to someone who has been known to be funny in such films as KNOCKED UP and "Undeclared." This film makes it clear that Baruchel is only as funny as the material he's giving, even when he's improvising. In THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE, he's a stuttering, stammering guy with no confidence that he can either get Becky (Teresa Palmer), the girl he's been pining for since he was a kid, or learn to be a proper conjurer. In other words, he's almost the identical guy he playing in SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE, minus the magic.
Here's the key to deciphering this movie. When the story focuses on the struggling romance between Baruchel and Palmer, it comes to a grinding, screeching halt--the kind that makes railcars jump the tracks and kills hundreds. When it focuses on sorcerer training and evil doing, it's better, but not by much. THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE's fatal flaw is the disproportionate time it spends on this time-suck of a love story. I'm not blaming Palmer, but if Becky had been cut out of the movie entirely, I wouldn't have missed her in the slightest. Sure, she's cute and charming, but I wanted more Alfred Molina as Morgana's lackey and former partner of Cage, Maxim Horvath.
The one character I thought had the most potential is Drake Stone (Toby Kebbell, who I recognized from ROCKNROLLA and PRINCE OF PERSIA), a Chris Angel-type of magician who is recruited by Maxim to capture Dave. Kebbell plays Drake like a watered-down Russell Brand, but at least there's a little spark in his performance. The still-lovely Monica Bellucci rounds out the list of famous faces as Veronica, Balthazar's fellow sorcerer and lady love trapped in a doll's body along with Morgana. She's barely in the film--a little in the beginning, a little more at the end--and is never truly given a chance to do much more than look exotic and riddled with anxiety.
I've never really liked Turtletaub as a director (3 NINJAS , COOL RUNNINGS, WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING, PHENOMEON, THE KID). He doesn't have anything resembling a visual style beyond "pleasant," and the emotions in his movies run about as deep as a melted ice cube. What this film needed to do is let Cage cut loose, the way Johnny Depp was allowed to with the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN films. But in THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE, Cage seems sedated, and even long hair and funky clothes can't make the character any more engaging or fun.
But the film's biggest eye-rolling moment occurs when Turtletaub attempts to re-create FANTASIA's dancing-mop-and-bucket sequence using Paul Dukas' original 1897 score. It's a clever idea, especially when Baruchel also enlists the help of brooms, dust busters, and other cleaning implements. But the sequence only made me remember how much this film pales in comparison to Disney's 1940 offering. In the end, THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE is a completely uninspired story (I still can't believe it took three people to write this nonsense) inspired by and tagged onto a legendary film moment that will now peripherally carry the stink of this movie upon it. "Lame" is the first and best word that popped into my head when I saw it. Thankfully, there's an infinitely better movie coming out later this week to salvage your faith in the summer movie season.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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