Copy is courtesy of Richard:
DreamWorks’ Real Steel had its Australian premiere in Sydney on 28 September, complete with an appearance by native Hugh Jackman, and The League were in the house to cover the event. Read more…
All posts tagged disney
New Trailers For Pixar’s: ‘BRAVE’ and Amazing Looking Spielberg: ‘WAR HORSE’ – Watch!
The last live action Steven Spielberg film was ‘INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL’ and before that it was ‘MUNICH.’ There really isn’t any better cinema than a Spielberg flick (opinions on INDY 4 withstanding – let’s say ‘non sequel’ Spielberg for the sake of it) He’s dependable as anything and you can always expect a phenomenal film. Read more…
Check Out The Awesome First Trailer For: ‘THE MUPPETS’! Looks So Good!
They’re finally back! Check out the new trailer after the jump: Read more…
‘TRON LEGACY’ movie review: Daft Punk, Pretty Pictures, Olivia Wilde & Jeff Bridges
Written by David.
I wasn’t alive when the original Tron came out in 1982. I first heard about it when watching that halloween episode of The Simpson’s where Homer winds up in the 3rd dimension after trying to avoid his intrusive in-laws Patty and Selma. Soon the whole of Springfield shows to help him escape. At one point Homer is able to communicate with everyone through voice - so the Springfield ask Homer to describe what the world he is in looks like. He responds with: “Did anyone see that movie Tron?” and then every single person in the room says ‘No’ one after the other. After a dozen No’s Chief Wiggum says: ‘Yes!’ Then obviously embarrassed quickly pretends with an added “…I mean no”.
I didn’t know what this meant at the time because I was a little kid, but now it makes sense. When Tron was released in 82’ it wasn’t a huge hit at all. It didn’t bomb, but it wasn’t a huge hit either. It is renowned as it was pretty much the first film that made extensive use of computer generated imagery; and it thus inspired many film-makers like John Lasseter to create things like Pixar. So without Tron we may not have had Toy Story.
If you were born after 1985 the odds are that you haven’t seen Tron and I’m betting that you don’t really get what this thing is all about. I for one knew about Tron for years, but I just had no interest in watching it until three years ago when Disney started making a huge deal about Tron Legacy- and even then it took another year and a half of the marketing for me to go and watch the original…which is now a cult film that has developed a significant fan base over the years. Heres the imdb synopsis of that film:
‘Hacker/arcade owner Kevin Flynn is digitally broken down into a data stream by a villainous software pirate known as the Master Control Program and is then reconstituted into the internal, 3-D graphical world of computers. It is there, in the ultimate blazingly colorful, geometrically intense landscapes of cyberspace, that Flynn joins forces with Tron to outmaneuver the Master Control program that holds them captive in the equivalent of a gigantic, infinitely challenging computer game.’
That’s pretty much all there was to it. A movie that had state of the art computer graphics; which were used to create cyber landscapes and the intense ‘games’ that take place within them. Watching the original film a year or so ago; I found that it wasn’t a particularly good film at all, the prehistoric computer effects dated it horribly. It is cheesy and garish and stuff like that; but I feel like we have to give it a bit of a pass, because it is a movie that is nearly 30 years old - of course its going to seem out of date and cliche..but it is a significant movie non-the-less.
It has somewhat of a Legacy and thats what matters. Its why the new film is called Legacy after all.
The production of Tron Legacy has been talked about extensively- and I feel that summarizing some of this backstory is relevant to discussing the final product.
The project was started by Disney in 2005, mostly because of the massive demand from the fans of the original film - I guess interest in a sequel resurfaced when Tron entered the public lexicon because of that internet phenomenon “Tron Guy”. The studio was looking for a director and they got Joseph Kosinski, who was known for his commercial and CGI work. He impressed them with a test reel - and they green lit the movie. With Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis writing the screenplay.
Once filming finished and the movie started getting edited: there was negative buzz everywhere. Rumors flew that the main actor Garett Hedlund’s performance was so bad that Disney was trying to edit his role down. Apparently all the guys from Pixar came on-board to take a look at an early cut of the movie and to help write new scenes for the re-shoots. David Fincher also came on board to help resolve some visual problems. It really seemed that Disney was starting to get some cold feet: after all they have spend upwards of 250 million dollars on the project.
They also with-held the blu ray and dvd re-release of the original Tron because they were concerned that if people saw the old one they would avoid the new one. Now on the eve of its release Box Office analysis is surely causing Disney stress: they are currently tracking little to no ‘audience interest’ for the film - and are projecting a $30 million dollar opening weekend. After spending 250+ on the movie, and the three years of marketing $30 million dollars would be disastrous for Disney.
The funny thing about all of this is that Legacy is almost a complete stand alone film - you don’t even need to have heard about Tron to understand what is going on…the sequel is just extremely convoluted its in own right.
So the film opens on Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) telling his young son Sam about the game world he created - and that one day he’ll take him there. But what do you know - this is the last time Sam saw his dad before he disappeared (‘Disappeared’ roughly translates into “trapped in a game world that I created”).
20 years later Sam (Garrett Hedlund) cannot get past his father’s disappearance - he believes his father deserted him and cannot understand why. The Star of the last movie: Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner - a la THE TITLE CHARACTER! —-THE TRON!) tells Sam that he received a pager message from his dad - but before that we have set up of what happened to the ENCOM corporation: the company that Jeff Bridges created, and of which TRON is the most popular game/software.
You see, Sam: he is the main shareholder now and blah blah blah he likes to terrorize the CEO’s instead of running the company. When we open the movie he is disrupting the company’s software update (which is a nice way to explain the change in computer graphics since the first film) - then he parachutes off the building (yes). We see a cute Chihuahua a few times, and people talk about stock and some really nice allusions to technology/Apple/Steve Jobs are made.
Then the original Tron shows up and he convinces Sam to go look for his dad! So Sam goes to the arcade and BAM! He is in the world of Tron.
Now I don’t want to spend the rest of the review blabbing on about the story, so I apologize for the following, but it is incredibly difficult to describe the plot of the movie because it is unnecessarily convoluted and takes forever to get going - but what you need to know is that Flynn is now somewhere in the world hiding from CLU (a copy of Flynn that went rogue) who is trying to take control. Every Tron member has a disc and on that disc is your private information. If CLU gets hold of Flynn’s disc all will be lost. So it becomes a chase movie; where everyone is trying to get Flynn (The Creator’s) disc.
And because its tron it involves a series of video game-esque motorbike chases/ dogfights/ disc fights/ bar room brawls and the like. So anyway Sam enters the world and almost immediately he is pitted against CLU in a stadium battle. Just before death the mysterious Quorra (Olivia Wilde) arrives and rescues him. She reveals herself to be a program - who wants to be a human. She takes Sam to see Flynn…and then…and then…and then…look its needlessly complex and I’m getting a headache trying to word it… there are points made about ISO’s, miracles, huge long flashbacks, world building is done to the extreme -.The closest movies in comparison to this would be the Matrix Sequels. Legacy fails and succeeds on the exact same levels.
There is so much world building and set up going on in Tron Legacy, that the story tellers actually forget to put in decent characters. In the two Matrix sequels so much time was spent learning the history and what was actually going on; that the main characters became nothing but cyphers for pretentious ideas. In Legacy the pretentious ideas are replaced with set pieces and visual trickery. Most of the plot of Legacy seems to exist to either set up a franchise or to get us to the next action sequence, but this isn’t to say that the movie doesn’t try…
The basic ideas are that Mankind can never achieve perfection and the closer we get to it; the further away we become, and that the bond between human beings is more significant than any business enterprise. There is also some commentary on the current state of technology - but all of these things seem very superficial anyways.
This is a movie that is meant to wow, and on that level it works.
The film is stunning. Absolutely beautiful - all the darkness and the neon - the production design - the costumes. Kosinki knows how to make a pretty image and it shows in every single shot. He knows how to make a clever and engaging action sequence…but because the look of the movie is so amazing one cannot help but also hold the story and the performances up to this level - and when you do that one comes out significantly higher than the other.
Garett Hedlund, who was said to be awful - is not that bad at all. He doesn’t get much to do besides look angry and then spout one liners like “now THAT is what I’m talking about!” or “now THIS I can do!”. The only times I felt his performance was truly weak was when he had to engage with Jeff Bridges, the two do not have the chemistry required for Father and Son and so it ends up a little awkward; no matter how reliable Bridges usually is.
Bridges has three roles in the movie, two of them are the young Flynn and CLU. CLU and Young Flynn are CGI creations and they look awful. Every time the “CGI CLU” is on screen it’s cringe worthy. I tried to explain it away as ‘he is a computer program, so he can look crap’ but it was no excuse when Olivia Wilde plays a program as well and she isn’t computer generated, and when…well the rest of the movie is almost entirely CGI as well.
Bridges also plays the Old Flynn, and he is great, seemingly stoned out of his mind the whole time - he plays the role as an aging stoner/ zen buddhist, and it is basically The Big Lebowski in the Tron world - at one point he says “It’s like Jazz, man”, and at another he says “you’re really making this zen thing hard for me” - I don’t know if I am just having difficultly separating Bridges from Lebowski, but whatever, it seemed like he was just having fun with it, and because of that we can too - he’s always good value, and in this movie it goes a long, long way.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying he is the only good cast member though, because Olivia Wilde and Michael Sheen are also in this. Olivia Wilde is amazing, and hey it doesn’t hurt that Olivia Wilde is one of the most beautiful women on the planet… but man she’s also such a talented actress- her character is that of a program (whose function is mysterious but integral to the story) who wide eyed and filled with curiosity for all things human - she’s also a kick ass fighter- she is the highlight of the cast for me -even over Bridges: she brings the much absent and much needed emotional center to the movie (better late than never) and I’m sure she’ll be a huge star very soon. I mean come on, she stole a movie from Jeff Bridges!
Michael Sheen is also in the cast, and he chews scenery like crazy, playing a David Bowie inspired club owner - who may or may not be able to provide help for our heroes. The rest of the cast is filled with eye candy women/men and some famous people popping up in cameos. Overall the cast was good, and especially considering that most of the movie was shot against a giant green screen (they had nothing to interact with) they scrub up well.
Ultimately any fault of the movie doesn’t really lay at their feet. The performances are not weak, it is the characters that are. I could go into spoilers (I wont), but if I did you would be amazed at how wasted half the cast is - especially one character in particular. Well look, it is not a spoiler actually (His name is in THE TITLE) - that’s right! Tron himself. Its amazing how botched he is. Anyway, you’ll understand when you see the movie.
Mostly every opportunity with every character (that isn’t Quorra) is wasted. I would like to point to the screenwriters Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, but I wouldn’t know if that would be accurate; but they took the Screenplay credit so I guess its on their shoulders. Somewhere along the road this movie got a screenplay that they decided was good enough to film- but who this should be credited to i’m unsure. The official credits on the movie are: Characters by: Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. Story by: Adam Horowitz, Edward Kitsis, Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal. Then Horowitz and Kitsis take the screenplay credit. We also know that uncredited work was done by Kosinski; the team at Pixar and possibly David Fincher. The Script is almost a complete muddled mess, and after going through that many cooks it is not surprising that the soup tastes a little funky. - but you know ,the script isn’t truly atrocious like many are claiming - it is just fairly bad - its not…you know; The Phantom Menace bad.
I would guess that the film began as an idea/action movie with no heart and all the extra people were brought on board to add said heart - all of this meddling and re-shooting was just too little too late. In the end the script is passable only because of the ideas and the world building and some of the characters, it is just not a great one, and its definitely a missed opportunity.
One thing that couldn’t be messed up by multiple hands; is the amazing look of the movie. It really is worth the price of admission. The whole entire movie is essentially glory-shots and incredible action. I loved, loved, the look of the movie - and because of that I was never truly bored. The neon glow, and the darkness. I just really enjoyed the filming style of Joseph Kosinki; the way he moves his camera, the way he frames the shots, the way the lighting is. Tron Legacy is a gorgeous looking film, and a technical accomplishment. The feat is even greater when you consider it is mostly CGI with a live action element- James Cameron would have Motion captured the whole movie - and its because of that reason that what Kosinski and the team at Disney have done is a pretty big technical achievement, and on that level Disney deserves to be commended. Its just a shame that there is also a pretty un-engaging script.
I will however say one thing about the story - its final moments were quite affecting. It wasn’t enough to excuse the other things; but they got the ending right; who-ever it was…but we wont spoil it here. If the rest of the movie had included the heart; the soul and the themes contained in that final shot then Tron Legacy would have been a classic.
Classic…there is that word again. Well you know what? I would bet that one thing about this movie will forever be deemed classic: that is Daft Punk’s score of the movie. I couldn’t imagine the movie having music any other way. So amazing is the score that I purchased the Soundtrack as soon as I got out of the theater and have been listening to it continuously since. Half of me would recommend you just go and buy the album instead of a cinema ticket.
But then you would miss out on the amazing visuals. Come to think about it, if you just treated the movie as one big long fireworks display - or one big long music video for Daft Punk then it could be a classic for you.
Tron Legacy is ultimately a sequel that doesn’t let down the original, nor will it let down the fans. There is a lot to like in this movie, and I would say that it outweighs the bad. In the end you still got:
Daft Punk, Pretty pictures, Olivia Wilde and Jeff Bridges…
6 out of 10
Trailer:
‘TANGLED’ Movie Review: ‘Whip Your Hair Back And Forth’.
Written by David.
‘Tangled’ would have been one of my top five films of 2010 if not for a couple of things: Firstly the opening ten minutes is garbage. Absolute trash. It speeds through such complicated plot and backstory in a couple of minutes with some shoddy voiceover. Opening a movie this way isn’t much of a problem, especially for a fairy tale movie…it’s just the way it is presented; with tons of dissolves and a terrible pacing – It just felt as if the movie originally opened with a half an hour sequence and that was hacked to strips when some test screening audience member concluded: “man, it just took so long to get to the tower, cut out all the talking stuff at the beginning”.
On top of this the characters were so badly introduced and none of the jokes were hitting. It all felt so horribly rushed. I had heard ‘Tangled’ had been in production for five or so years and the development of it was complicated….but anyway, after this sequence ended, the movie just clicked for me. The jokes that weren’t working, starting hitting constantly – I was beginning to like the characters…The animation was stunning…the pacing extraordinary…it just…well lets go back to the start, because I think to fully appreciate ‘Tangled’ we gotta briefly look at the history of Disney’s animated feature films:
So ‘Tangled’ marks the 50th animated feature film from Walt Disney Studios. Besides the work from Pixar (Which arguably is a studio in itself) Disney hasn’t particularly been on fire as of late.
There have been two ‘Golden Ages’ of Disney: the first spans 1937 – 1942 where they had a slew of untouchable classics: ‘Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs’, ‘Pinocchio’, ‘Fantasia’, ‘Dumbo’ and ‘Bambi’. After that time up to 1989 it was very hit and miss for the company. For every ‘Peter Pan’ and every ‘Cinderella’ there was a ‘Oliver And Company’.
To be clear this doesn’t necessarily mean that the films were bad. I haven’t seen every single Disney animated movie; but when I looked over the fifty film long list, I realized I had seen and enjoyed over forty of them – and many of them have been beautifully animated as well as captivating – it’s just that the time period in between the Golden Ages did not see Disney producing the type of ‘Disney Classic’ as we have come to know.
But then in the late eighties something happened and a new Golden Age began. From 1999 to 1989 Disney Animation produced ‘The Little Mermaid’, ‘Beauty And The Beast’, ‘Aladdin’, ‘The Lion King’, ‘Pocahontas’, ‘The Hunchback Of Notre Dame’, ‘Hercules’ and ‘Mulan’. And then with came computer graphics, and with that came an apparent distaste for musicals and entertainment aimed squarely at Children.
The next ten years resulted in a huge drop off from both the audience and the quality of Disney: amongst others we saw: ‘Fantasia 2000’, ‘Dinosaur’, ‘The Emperors New Groove’, ‘Atlantis: The Lost Empire’, ‘Treasure Planet’. etc. Many of these pictures are entertaining in their own right, and as it was Disney they were always beautifully animated. They were however very hit and miss, relying too much on celebrity voices and audience pandering – as a result of this and the competition from computer films the audience just stopped going.
And as they stopped going, the films stopped being made. Because of the fallout from the computer animated revolution the traditional hand drawn film began to die….factories were shut down, animators were put out of jobs…sigh
Anyway what does any of this have to do with ‘Tangled’? Well whilst it isn’t 2D animated, it is a very very good animated film, in the spirit and style of the classic Disney films. It marks a return to what they did the best: put a spin on a classic fairytale, with some great characters, some spunk and top of the line/exquisite animation. The only major issue with ‘Tangled’ is the tepid songs…but more on that in a moment.
‘Tangled’ is an adaptation of the story of Rapunzel: You know: “Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair!”. For those who aren’t aware of the story, it is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale in which a young princess is stolen from her parents by an enchantress and locked away in a tower with neither stairs nor doors. The enchantress would often come to see Rapunzel, and the princess would have to let her long, long, long, long, hair down so the enchantress could climb it. At some stage there is a prince who comes to rescue the princess.
In ‘Tangled’ Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) and her situation are quite similar, but there is a Disney spin on things. It all begins when an elderly woman named Gothel (Donna Murphy) finds a magical flower which can beautify, de-age and heal people. It is the last of its kind, and its properties makes her young and beautiful. She hides it away, and before long the King stumbles across it, after looking for it to heal his ailing Queen.
Without the flower Gothel ages horribly, and when the King and Queen give birth to a baby girl, Gothel notices the child’s hair glows bright just like flower – so she kidnaps the baby Rapunzel; poses as her mother and comes to the tower every so often when she needs a ‘freshening up’.
Every year, on Rapunzel’s birthday the King and Queen send floating lanterns into the air as a sign. They hope the lanterns will allow for the return of their daughter. The main story of the movie opens 18 years after all this with Rapunzel requesting to leave the tower and see the lanterns. She of course is forbidden to leave.
Meanwhile pathetic thief Flynn Rider (voiced by Zachary Levi) has stolen a tiara, and whilst on the run, he stumbles across Rapunzels tower. Long story short Rapunzel captures Flynn and gives him an ultimatum: Help her break out and see the lanterns for real, and she will tell no-one he has stolen the tiara. Things complicate when Gothel returns to find Rapunzel gone, and the soldiers are now out looking for Flynn.
‘Tangled’ is an appropriately standard fairy tale. A handsome dashing Rogue teams up with a Princess. There is Magic and witches. There are Royalty and bumbling soldiers, some comedic animals – it is very ‘Aladdin’ in its execution. It has some spectacular action sequences, and some very clever comedic moments, just don’t go in expecting some deep meaning – it is mostly an enjoyable children’s movie: complete with a simple moral, and cute animals and cheap pratfalls – but like Pixar it provides just enough to keep the adult entertained. It’s sweet and romantic in parts, yet thrilling and just plain fun in others.
When the movie is not finding a thousand uses for Rapunzels long hair (which is probably the most entertaining aspect of the movie) it is developing its characters. That is one of the surprising things about ‘Tangled’ besides the rushed opening the story takes its time.
Unlike the recent Disney; scenes are longer than thirty seconds and characters actually talk to each other. I was surprised at how well defined these characters were – like Aladdin and Jasmine; both Rapunzel and Flynn are extremely grounded and relatable – except for the magical hair stuff of course – an example of this would be Flynn being presented to us as a typical Disney Rogue, only to be slowly revealed as a pathetic performer. I loved this, because it added layers to him and gave an interesting spin on the cliche. It was just so refreshing to see a Disney fairy tale hero with some really interesting flaws. The fact that Flynn pretends to be someone he isn’t in order to get by is incredibly relatable, and ingenious.
The film-makers do things like this with the characters consistently. They are first presented to you as the cliched Disney stereotype, and then over the course of the movie they are flipped and humanized. This goes for the mother Gothel, the Thugs, the King and Queen – and of course Pascal: Pascal is the little non-speaking animal that accompanies a princess in these types of movies. In this case it is a chameleon, and it gets much to do. I loved Pascal.
There are other animal characters, and there is one that almost steals the whole movie: Maximus: a horse that just so happens to be the head of the palace guard. I groaned at the introduction of him expecting it to be the worst part of the movie- but pretty soon I was won over because of the original spin placed on him – and how hilarious it and clever it was. I will of course not ruin Maximus for you.
It was all the playing with your expectation of a Disney movie that I appreciated. Remember the live action movie they did called ‘Enchated’ . What makes ‘Tangled’ is the same thing that made that film work. Part of the fun of ‘Tangled’ is just seeing all of the Disney tropes and cliches modernized and spun so cleverly. There are no modern day radio one hit wonder songs (Except Willow Smith’s ‘Whip My Hair’ seems wildly appropriate). There is no stunt casting… there is basically none of the stuff that plagued the ‘Shrek’ series. There are some movie references but they are placed organically – and are not spelled out for you. The only sore thumbs are some of the musical numbers:
Look the songs in ‘Tangled’ aren’t horrible by any stretch. A couple of them are even great. They just aren’t very uninspired and are mostly tepid. The singing and the film-making are fantastic, it is just the songs themselves: “When Will My Life Begin” is the first song we hear in the movie and it is really good. “Mother Knows Best” follows, and that song goes on forever. Another song I remember was called “I’ve Got A Dream” and it was excellent and the best number by far – every other song was unmemorable and strange – strange in the sense that the characters just appeared to be singing dialogue and not actually performing a song.
The great Disney musicals used every song to mark crucial turning points in the character and story: ‘Tangled’ begins to feel like it includes them just for the sake of it. I should however say that the songs are not complete garbage, just a bit on the tedious side – but then again that could just be my own musical taste. I’m sure kids will enjoy the hell out of them.
Besides the songs and the opening ten minutes – everything else about ‘Tangled’ works so wonderfully. From the stunning animation – which takes cues from oil paintings as well as the traditional animation style of Disney…the movie just looks unbelievable. The voice cast is excellent, especially Mandy Moore. I did not pick the voice of Rapunzel at all – thats the level of characterization going on in this movie: it isn’t a ‘Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy’ sort of thing at all – where the actors just play themselves and don’t bother to act… As for Zachary Levi I was aware he was voicing Flynn Rider because I watched season one of ‘Chuck’ in which he plays the main character, and he was great sure, but I was particularly impressed with Mandy Moore – she sold it to me to the point, where I didn’t even care to know who the actress was – the character is so bright and alive that she deserves a lot of credit for it.
The actors and all; I think it is fair to say that everybody involved with ‘Tangled’ just wanted to make a classical Disney movie and did not care about pandering to an audience and the level of the box office receipts. It’s a classy movie made by classy film-makers.
The fact that it feels so classical is just great – it goes against every money making principle to make a movie like this – and Disney did it. They placed quality over money – and hey what do you know, ‘Tangled’ is a gigantic box office success in the US (the movie releases in Australia in January) – it was also exceptionally well received critically. At the end of the day, if it wasn’t for some minor issues with the songs and the opening ten minutes ‘Tangled’ would almost be indistinguishable from a golden age disney movie. Besides the 3D of course.
‘Tangled’ might not be the starter of a new Golden Age, but it is definitely a step in the right direction; and because of it’s quality it has the chance to be enjoyed by children and adults for years to come. A possible classic.
9 out of 10.
New Trailer for the 2011 ‘WINNIE THE POOH’ movie!
Wow this looks more phenomenal then I thought. We can’t judge a movie by trailer, but this movie looks to have the exact blend of sentimentality, melancholia and humour that makes ‘Winnie The Pooh’ the wonderful thing it is. I loved it so much when I was a child, and still love it now. The television series is classic…and I enjoyed the other ‘Pooh’ movies like ‘Tigger movie’; ‘Piglets Big Movie’ and ‘The Heffalump Movie’ but they didn’t exactly find the balance; let alone feature Winnie The Pooh and Christopher Robin.
Also thank you Disney for not going full blown 3D with this like the new ‘Yogi Bear’. It actually seems like there is a care and love of the material. Beautiful traditional animation and some gorgeous looking painted backgrounds. Ah tradition…
…Well, here is the new trailer where you can see Pooh and Co gangster Rap …just kidding…
Here ya go:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbFz-GCkOM&feature=player_embedded#!
What do you think?
David’s review of ‘THE SORCERERS APPRENTICE’
‘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
PussADD
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