[Review] The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

By
Lithera
 – August 23, 2010Posted in: Essential Reading, Movie Review, Movies
The Sorcerer's Apprentice

This one has been out there for awhile but we already had a review for The Expendables and there wasn’t anything else out that I was going to see without someone paying me to do it. I’m glad that won’t be an issue in the next few weeks, in fact, most of the rest of the year looks like I should be able to find something to see to review, so don’t you fear. That said, if there is anything in specific you want to make sure I see and review, please leave a comment and I’ll put it on the list.

There are glimmers of what could have been a great movie here but unfortunately, there are some serious editing and story flow problems, especially any time the action picks up.  We start out in the past, getting to see Nicholas Cage, Alfred Molina and Monica Bellucci all on screen together.  Don’t get used to it, though, because you’ll see very little of all three of the actors together and woefully little of Bellucci at all through the entire movie.  The first action scene is used to set up the entire movie where we learn that (unsurprisingly) Morgan Le Fay is a powerful, evil sorceress in the ‘destroy/take over the world’ sort of way.  Thus begins the battle that ends up taking Balthazar on his two fold quest and a through a short series of flashbacks, which ends up being one of my favorite parts of the movie.

As soon as we get to the present day, though, is when we start running into problems.  The first is that this movie has no solid sense of time.  Dates are made, days and nights pass but there is still no strong sense of how long all of this is taking.  Balthazar meets Dave and his training as a sorcerer starts and you’re never exactly sure how long it is that they’re training.  I came away with the feeling that the entire movie feeling that it could have passed in just a few days but that seemed improbable because of how much is accomplished by all of the characters.  Dave woos the girl he’s in love with, he learns he is The Prime Merlinian (which never stops sounding less absurd), trains in sorcery, is in several running battles through new York City and has time to work on his Tesla Coil experiments all in what seems like four days.  It is even worse in the final battle scene.  For example,  Dave’s love interest is given a task in the final battle but due to the editing, it is hard to tell if she accomplishes it and if she does accomplish it, if has the effect it was intended to as the two events are separated by too much time.

The other issue I had was that there are three women who get any screen time at all.  One of them is the main villain and the other two are essentially there as prizes for success for the two main characters.  Balthazar’s quest is to save his beloved Veronica and Dave’s entire life since the age of ten, has been about earning  Becky’s love (or living down his lack of ability to capitalize on his chances).  Veronica also serves as a plot device, giving her slightly more to do other than be pretty but not much.  It is a shame, too, as they’re both given enough depth to be interesting but not much more to do on screen other than take up time and motivate the male leads.  (Bellucci is so little in the movie that is seems like a bait and switch to have used her on the movie posters.)  They both get slightly more screen time than Morgan Le Fay, played by Alice Krige, who while played up as the largest evil ever, gets nothing but trite dialogue and a battle where she gets to essentially repeat exactly the lines you’d expect before the inevitable conclusion.

The cast, though, does a good job with that they’re given.  My favorite of all of the supporting cast is Toby Kebbell as ‘Drake Stone’, who I haven’t seen in anything before.  He plays up the Criss Angel/David Blane cross very well and stole most every scene he was in.  Both Nicholas Cage and Jay Baruchel do a decent job of playing off of each other and showing more than a little charm from time to time.  It isn’t enough to save the movie entirely, but it does raise it up, along with some fun special effects, to an acceptable family summer movie.  Alfred Molina does a decent job as Horvath but you get the feeling that he never truly lets himself chew on the scenery as much as he might like to, which is a shame.

I give The Sorcerer’s Apprentice 3 out of 5 stars.  Entirely enjoyable as a matinee, at a second run theater or as a DVD rental.

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About the Author

By day, Lithera works for a well known on-line retailer. By night, she watches movies, plays video games, reads books, indulges in the occasional tabletop RPG and writes for PopBunker.net. Lithera is a geek girl and not afraid to admit it. A second generation table-top gamer, she remembers watching her father play D&D and has been playing computer games since her family brought home an Apple IIe. She loves movies, cartoons, comic books and a lot of other things she was supposed to give up when she grew up. She can be found on Twitter, Liverjournal and Facebook.