‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ is a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. For many of you that automatically means it’s going to be bad. You think back to the films he produced like ‘Con Air’, ‘The Rock’, ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’, ‘Prince Of Persia’ and the‘National Treasure’ franchise and you think a couple of things: Wow, he generally makes really crappy movies, and hey, he tends to cast Nicolas Cage a lot.
Bruckheimer makes audience films and some succeed (‘Pirates of the Caribbean’) and some really really don’t (like the ones above), but you could always count on one thing: they are going to be enjoyable on some level; even if it is ‘so bad it’s good’. Then 2010 happened and ‘Prince Of Persia’ was just plain bad.
‘The Sorcerers Apprentice’ is also not a good movie. Not at all…but unlike ‘Prince Of Persia’ you can at least have some fun with it.
The idea for the movie originated from Nicolas Cage, whom wanted to adapt the famous Mickey Mouse section in ‘Fantasia’; which itself was adapted from a poem by Goethe. The entire extent of this story is that an elderly sorcerer leaves his apprentice in his workshop and asks him to clean it up for him. The apprentice uses magic to enliven the brooms and whatnot, but he so skilled and the cleaning products go amok. The apprentice attempts to fix things but he isn’t skilled enough and ends up making things worse. Ultimately the sorcerer returns and fixes things all up. It was Mickey Mouse who played the apprentice.
So I guess Jay Baruchel plays the Mickey Mouse; imaginatively named David, and Nicolas Cage plays the Sorcerer named Balthazar. The two do re-enact the ‘Fantasia’ scene in the movie: It’s in the context of Jay Baruchel’s Dave awaiting his love interest to arrive for a date. he realizes the room is dirty and gets the cleaning products moving with magic. It’s beat for beat the above story, and it’s really entertaining. They use musical cues from ‘Fantasia’ and its a lot of fun. Scenes like this is why I said ‘you can have fun with this movie’.
It’s just a shame that these type of fun scenes are so few and far between.
The story is so incredibly convoluted that the following information is conveyed to you within the first ten minutes through voice over:
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
In 740 AD, one of Merlin’s (James A. Stephens) apprentices, Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina), joins forces with the evil sorceress Morgana le Fay (Alice Krige), betraying Merlin. Morgana mortally wounds Merlin before his other apprentices, Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) and Veronica (Monica Bellucci), can stop her. While Balthazar battles Horvath, Morgana prepares to kill Balthazar, but is stopped by Veronica, who absorbs Morgana’s soul into her own body. As Morgana tries to kill Veronica from within, Balthazar stops her by imprisoning Morgana and Veronica in the Grimhold, a prison similar to a nesting doll.
Before dying, Merlin gives his remaining apprentice a dragon ring that will choose the Prime Merlinian, who will become Merlin’s successor. Only the Prime Merlinian will be able to defeat Morgana. Throughout history Balthazar imprisons Morganians, sorcerers who try to release Morgana, including Horvath, into successive layers on the Grimhold while he searches for the successor.
END OF WIKIPEDIA.
If you couldn’t follow the above, and are worried about not being able to follow it during the ten minute opening narration…then don’t worry; because Nicolas Cage repeats most of it every ten minutes, and if that’s not enough then Jay Baruchel questions it and then interprets it…and it thus gets dumbed down for the children.
Alfred Molina: he plays the villain Horvath, he also constantly repeats it. It’s one of the most beguiling decisions made in the movie: they give you all the information within ten minutes, and then you have to spend the remaining two hours watching Jay Baruchel discover (I mean told) it. On top of that, this is a Disney movie, so you know the very exact story beats that the film is going to have. When you go through the motions with a film like this there is only one thing you can hope for: A surprise along the way. There is an argument that goes on whenever you watch a stupid movie: “It’s made for kids”. Well ‘Toy Story 3’ was made for kids and it wasn’t predictable or boring, and It was a Disney film also.
There is so much exposition in this film, that it seems the cast are aware of it. Cage, in particular, is given these huge monologues which just list information. He takes these monologues and spices them up in ways only he could, but unfortunately the screenplay is so unwieldily that nobody in the cast can enliven it. Jay baruchel tries very very hard, and so does Molina and Teresa Palmer. Everyone seems to know the movie they are in, and many of the scenes seem improvised. The chemistry between all the cast is fine..and you quickly get a sense of the characters (as one note as they are). It is just a shame this talented cast is given such leaden heavy handed material, its actually quite impressive what some of them do with it.
So much of ‘Sorcerers Apprentice’ works. I mentioned the cast. It also has spectacular visual effects and set pieces. All the ingredients are there, but for every good thing they are four bad. The most damaging is the awful screenplay. We know that without a good script nothing else really matters, unless a director can bring something else to it…well it doesn’t help that National Treasure director Jon Turtletaub completely mangles the tone: It’s all over the place. One scene is comedic, the next very serious and intense, the next romantic, the next has action. It is exhausting; after half an hour the movie gives you a jet lag because you are jumping from tone to tone and pace to pace so much.
There is one subplot of the movie that I actually enjoyed, and surprisingly that was the love story between Jay Burachel and Teresa Palmer. It was predictable for sure, but the two had this great chemistry that was electric. It made it very fun to watch because of this.
Thinking back, I wish the whole movie was this: Burachel being taught magic by Cage, and Burachel using it to get with women, and you know, he could fail at it, and Cage could be great with women, and then you could have a nice little rip on the Fantasia thing…sigh…
The main story line is so forced and so convoluted that it is incredibly boring and difficult to follow. They were introducing pivotal characters so late into the movie (one five minutes before the end) I was wondering what the hell was the point? All it served to do was complicate things unnecessarily. With all the violence and intensity I could argue this wasn’t for children at all…but its hollywood: this is a movie made for every taste, and thats why it fails.
It follows such a Hollywood formula that at one point Jay Burachel quits being a sorcerer. The last movie I saw where the hero gives up was Transformers 2. It’s a lazy way to create drama, and all it does here is waste 20 minutes of screen time, and when you are watching a movie and thinking of Transformers 2 you know you are in trouble.
When people aren’t explaining plot points in the flick; there is action, and most of it is fairly irrelevant to the plot. There is never a sense that anyone is going to die; so automatically you switch off. The effects are pretty, but its just a set piece movie. Example: They happen to be in Chinatown, Alfred Molina shows up and turns a street dragon puppet into a real one = battle. Example: They are in taxis chasing each other, they ‘magic’ them into Porches (because they can – Its another example of Bruckheimer excess…just so they can put it in the trailer). Example: There is a rug, Molina shows up and turns it into quicksand.
And so on and on. At one point I just wished the film was a Jumangi/ Zathura type deal; Where Jay Baruchel and Nicolas Cage play a magical board game… It would have worked so much better. All the irrelevant excesses would have fit in with the story and they could have done away with all the convolution.
I have next to nothing to say about the director Jon Turtletaub. I don’t know what he brings to a movie. He seems like a Brett Ratner. He does the job, he does the job very well, but he makes the producers movie, and since ‘Apprentice’ has more in common with Jerry Bruckheimer, I’m going to guess that this is a movie by Hollywood committee.
The cinematography and the production design are impressive. The sets are magnificent, and Turtletaub shoots them well. My complaint here would be the ridiculous amount of product placement. And it is ridiculous! At one point Nicolas Cage is looking for ‘His secret wall’ and he walks over to an enormous Nokia mobile phone poster, and pulls it aside to get to the wall. There are pepsi adds and cans everywhere and etc etc. You know, that “secret wall” behind the Nokia poster could be a metaphor for the whole movie: we put the flashy crap first, and the story materials come second.
At points in the movie it seems like all they are doing is attempting to set up a franchise. The movie fails at this because it’s is just so derivative and predictable. For a huge portion of the film Jay Burachel needs to become trained in magic. It becomes Karate Kid, cue montage sequence. Another point of contention is that people wield magical rings. (Green Lantern and those other films that nobody saw) not to mention the very best scene in the whole entire movie is ripped off from ‘Fantasia’.
For every great joke there are ten bad ones. You can enjoy a dog farting, or peeing for example. For every entertaining action sequence there are two horrible exposition scenes.
The whole proceedings smell of a cash in; from the ridiculous and out of place soundtrack choices that populate the movie, to the score itself: Trevor Rabin’s score sounds almost exactly like Hans Zimmer’s score for Pirates (Seriously, go check it out, it’s shameless). It’s ridiculous, and when you take into account that Jerry Bruckheimer hasn’t had a hit film in a while…are you really surprised that the score sounds exactly like ‘Pirates’?
For a movie that presents all these magical possibilities, I was amazed at how little was actually done with the ending. Each scene tops itself, and then the final battle is so anti-climactic (to the point where I’m not sure If magic even saved the day at all?), and its so rubbish, that it leaves you with a weak-sauce taste in your mouth.
Here is actual dialogue between the Hero and the Villain during the final battle:
Hero: “And now…we END THIS!”
Villain: “Now its my turn!”
Hero: “Is that the best you can do?!”
Villain: “And now its my turn!”
Hero: “It’s on like Donkey Kong!!!” (I added this one).
You have heard it all before. It’s barely an effort of a movie. No matter how beautiful it looks, how great the effects are, how cool new york is evoked, how good the cast is, how much money it seemed to have cost etc etc, it just utterly fails…because it such a bore. So predictable and derivative… it is the very definition of ‘ A forgettable film’. If I didn’t take notes I would be hard pressed to remember any of it.
It even has the trademarked Disney moral, and it is spoken aloud by Cage.
Here it is, word for word: Spoken after a lot of people have been killed.
“No-one knows the time they have with people…enjoy it while you still can”.
I would say follow Nicolas Cage’s advice and don’t see this movie, because you have better things to do with your time, you have better films to see…or you know…you could spend your time “with people” instead…so you can “enjoy it while you still can.”
3 out of 10
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