“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (2010)

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Grade: C

While it contains a few fun ideas, such as the ineluctable Nicolas Cage as an immortal wizard, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a big-budget shlock-fest that tries to do too much while ultimately doing nothing at all. A few more notes on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice:

Directing:

Jon Turteltaub is a serviceable director-for-hire (his most notable films are While You Were Sleeping and the National Treasure franchise). Unfortunately, he can’t make magic out of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: there are too many CGI action sequences and rom-com clichés to take the mythological aspects seriously. The best scene is an homage to Fantasia, which puts the CGI to good use, but the whimsy is wasted on characters who are too old to be in a young-adult blockbuster. Harry Potter this is not.

Acting:

Cage digs deep into his role, no surprise there, and his fully committed performance is the film’s lone redeeming quality. The rest of the cast is not so great: Jay Baruchel is playing a freaky and geeky caricature of himself, while it’s clear that Alfred Molina — despite hamming it up — is only here to cut a check. And although I don’t want to criticize a child actor, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that 14-year-old Jake Cherry nearly ruins the entire film in only a couple scenes.

Writing:

There’s a good story buried somewhere in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; listen to Cage muse on mysticism and metaphysics for proof. However, Turteltaub is more concerned with, or held back by, the production values. At its core, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is like Percy Jackson and the Olympians but with modern-day Arthurian legends in place of Greek gods. But the film feels like an entire franchise truncated into 109 minutes: lengthy prologue that lays down the backstory, 10-minute sequence of young Dave Stutler first encountering magic and then roughly 90 minutes to complete the entire thousand-year-long quest. For a more cohesive and enjoyable film about Olde Tyme Magick, I recommend Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost.

Music:

Trevor Rabin (of 90125-era Yes) provides the soundtrack, which is standard action movie fare, neither here nor there. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice also features songs by Jimmy Eat World and OneRepublic, which although catchy, are only meant to appeal to … viewers who are in the same age range as Baruchel (28)? Kids won’t want to watch this movie, and neither will teens or grown-ups.

Ending (SPOILERS):

I was shocked that there was no set-up for a sequel. Dave gets the girl, destroys the Grimhold and becomes the Prime Merlinean — a saga which usually would take three or four films but is finished up in less than two hours. Obviously it’s a good thing that a bad movie like this didn’t turn into a long-running franchise, but it’s clear that everything about The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is rushed.

“Love is a distraction. Sorcery requires complete focus.” – Balthazar Blake

Why The Sorcerer’s Apprentice gets a C:

Cramming an entire hypothetical franchise into less than two hours makes for an incoherent film that has no idea what it wants to be or what type of story it wants to tell. Who knew?

---