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So as you know, I stopped writing lengthy reviews on this site this year, keeping the blog as more of a film diary of sorts.  Lo and behold,...

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Movie Review - The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)

The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)
Starring Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, and Monica Bellucci
Directed by Jon Turteltaub

Putting "From the director and producer of National Treasure" on your movie poster is not a selling point for me.  Yes, that movie raked in quite a bit of dough and produced a sequel, but it seemed like a low-rent Indiana Jones for this reviewer.  Add to that, "starring Nicolas Cage" often makes me run in the other direction.

Let's just say I was very pleasantly surprised with Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice which has much of what I want in a summer movie -- action, cool special effects, and some light humor.  Throw in a tiny bit of a romance and a shockingly amusing turn from Nic Cage himself and this is a sleeper hit for me (unfortunately, I don't see it doing boffo box office, though).

In 740 AD, sorcerer Merlin and his three assistants are desperately trying to battle Morgana Lafey as she attempts to use her powers to bring ruin to mankind.  While they were successful in trapping Morgana in what is essentially a Russian nesting doll (it's given a much niftier name in the film that has slipped my mind), it is not without casualty.  One of Merlin's assistants, the beautiful Veronica (Belucci) is trapped inside the doll with Morgana while another of his associates, Horvath (Molina), betrays and kills his mentor.  This leaves Balthazar (Cage) as the one good sorcerer left and he spends hundreds of years trapping the evil magicians in successively larger dolls surrounding Morgana.  Merlin's dying wish to Balthazar was that he find a true descendant of Merlin who can carry on the Merlinian bloodline and fight to contain the evil Morgana.

All that is told in a rather silly five minute narrative opening that had me questioning the tone of the film. It seemed to be taking itself unnecessarily seriously and it didn't bode well for things to come.  Fortunately, I was wrong.  Cut to nearly 1300 years later and a young school kid named David finds himself through a twist of fate entering a shop owned by Balthazar.  The sorcerer doesn't quite believe in coincidence and soon discovers that David could very well be Merlin's descendent and, eventually, takes him on as his apprentice.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice isn't a work of art.  There are certainly a few flaws here and there, but it was one heckuva enjoyable two hours.  Nic Cage is really great as the quirky oddball Balthazar and he and young Jay Baruchel make quite a duo.  They play off each other amazingly well and are really what make this film rise above typical summer fare.  Alfred Molina is a pretty sinister villain for a PG-rated fantasy flick.  On a completely different end of the spectrum, the gorgeous Teresa Palmer as David's love interest Becky is actually used to good effect here (there's a scene in particular where physics geek David takes her to his lab that is near perfect in terms of capturing the excitement of that "moment" of falling in love).

The film reminds me of the way I felt when I watched The Neverending Story, Jumanji, Little Monsters (oh, Fred Savage),  or even those "classic" Disney live actioners like Escape to Witch Mountain as a kid. These may not be perfect films, but they carry a sense of nostalgia.  There's nothing (except for maybe some special effects) that make it seem like The Sorcerer's Apprentice couldn't have been made in my 1980s youth.  There's no language, no sex, no overt violence...and while that may not appeal to everyone reading this, the innocence of it all conjured up the nostaligia factor and sometimes that's a fun thing to feel when watching a movie.

I, for one, am actually looking forward to seeing this one again.

The RyMickey Rating:  B

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