REVIEW: Nicolas Cage's Magic Can't Save Sorcerer's Apprentice
And that's all in the first 10 minutes. Cut to modern times -- 2000, specifically -- when a little kid on a school field trip wanders into a cavernous and dusty curio shop, meets a weirdo named Balthazar in a 19th-century distressed leather coat, accidentally frees Horvath from his little urn, and, apparently, has a nervous breakdown. Cut to 2010: That kid has grown up to be Baruchel's Dave, a nerdy NYU whiz-kid who builds Tesla coils in his spare time but also has his eye on a girl, Becky (Teresa Palmer), who used to be his childhood crush but is now all grown up.
Dave has written off the whole curio-shop incident -- which involved a sort of indoor lightning storm -- as a hallucination. Then Balthazar shows up and tells Dave that -- surprise! -- he's the Prime Merlinian and will have to trade his sneakers for pointy-toed leather shoes. And so forth.
The smallest surprise, in a movie that's almost wholly lacking in surprise, is that Cage is fun to watch. He may be an actor who makes a million dollars every time he blinks, but to his credit, even in a junky diversion like this one, he makes every blink count. Cage doesn't send up the goofy material; instead he approaches it with utter sincerity: There's muted, believable passion in his eyes even as he's serving up all that Prime Merlinian nonsense. I think plenty of us are frustrated with Cage because he takes so many roles that are beneath him. Then again, his saving grace as an actor may be that he doesn't act as if anything is beneath him.
Baruchel makes a suitably low-key counterpart to Cage; he keeps the awkward boy-genius routine going at a low, steady hum instead of cranking it up to deafening levels. In fact, he and Cage are just appealing enough to make you wish the movie around them were better. Scene after scene, Turteltaub, production designer Naomi Shohan and cinematographer Bojan Bozelli show us potentially magical ideas that just fall flat: A nod to the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of Fantasia is charming at the beginning but goes on too long before winding down to a predictable end.
One of the movie's more inspired fillips is that Horvath has the ability to disguise his vehicle by turning all the cars on the street into taxi cabs. That's a stroke of genius worthy of someone like Terry Gilliam, but Turteltaub falls down on the execution: He shows us the sea of yellow cabs all right, but nothing about the moment sparkles. The idea floating behind The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and it's a marvelous one, is that in the city, magic is both everywhere you look and everywhere you don't look. Turteltaub shows us where to look by pointing, when the real magic is what's going on just outside our field of vision.
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Comments
When ever some third rate bashes a movie it proves to be a mega hit. Thanks for the bash. If this is the only movie I see this summer I know I won't be disapointed.
If this is the only movie you see this summer, I'll be disappointed for you.
Ummmmm, I'm kinda sorta looking forward to this one too. All the trailers and clips I've seen look pretty darn good. I enjoyed Baruchel's deadpan delivery when he did hiccup's voice in "How to Train Your Dragon", it's nice to see young Jake Cherry (Nick from "Night at the Museum")in another movie, Molina never disappoints as a baddie, and as for Cage, well shoot, I like-a him just fine. We'll be there opening day, yo.
This movie looks like it has a weak storyline and lame plot with one-liner, dialogue with cheesy comedy and a very predictable movie. It is going to be like Percy Jackson: Sell the audience with great CGI but do not show them the weak storyline. This movie is going to fail. Inception looks more better and it has better reviews than this pile of junk. Just because a movie looks "fun" doesn't mean it is going to be good.
His name is "Dave?" I was really hoping for "Mickey."
And I don't think it's "beneath" a movie star to star in a big summer movie. You had a similar critique of Adrian Brody last week. As for their performances - these actors are too good to "wink" at the audience as you suggest they might have.
calm down, greggy. get 2 aroma therapy candles, concentrate on the flames for 2 and 1/2 hours & you will be a sweetie pie.....
Nicolas Cage is EASILY one of the most eccentric people in Hollywood right now and at the same time one of the most successful box office draws of all time. He’s awesome! He’s responsible for Johnny Depp being an actor, owns/owned a DINOSAUR SKULL, and just rocks. Here’s more than enough proof:
http://www.digitallizardproductions.com/daily-fournication-07.14.10--why-nicolas-cage-is-crazy-cool.html
How can you not like the guy or at least not find him extremely interesting after reading that?
This is not a dig on the review, but if I hear "normal people only use 10% of their brains" one more time, I will destroy something. I don't know why movies continue to perpetuate this idea and why people believe it. Sigh.
Not exactly a classic like the Percy Jackson film though
She hardly trashed it. Sheesh!
And just because a movie looks ponderous doesn't mean it will be any better, MISTAH COBB!
This movie was ok. People gave it short strift because, essentially, you've seen it all before. But it's worth a DVD rental. Not bad, but not particularly good either.