Susan Granger’s review of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (Walt Disney Studios)
Back in the 1940s, the centerpiece of Disney’s classic “Fantasia” was Mickey Mouse’s borrowing his master’s magical hat and causing havoc with mops and pails of water in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. But there’s only a brief glimmer of that 10-minute symphonic sequence by French composer Paul Dukas in this noisy, heedless hodgepodge, based on a good vs. evil morality tale.
A prologue explains how, 1,300 years ago, the Arthurian magician Merlin (James A. Stephens) battled with evil Morgana Le Fay (Alice Krige), trapping her in a nested-doll-like container that’s been carefully guarded ever since by Merlin’s disciple Bathazar (Nicolas Cage). Fast forward to 2000, as 10 year-old Dave Stutler (Jake Cherry) is lured into a Manhattan curio shop where he has a traumatizing encounter with Bathazar Blake, who sternly informs him that he’s a Prime Merlinian (a direct descendant of Merlin) and will someday be a great wizard, despite the fact that he inadvertently releases Blake’s sneering arch-nemesis Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina) from imprisonment. Skip ahead to 2010. Dave (Jay Baruchel) is a NYU physics nerd who’s still enamored with his childhood crush, Becky Barnes (Teresa Palmer). While villainous Horvath plots with his British punk protégé Drake (Toby Kebbell), Bathazar recruits Dave as his unwilling trainee to save mankind from annihilation.
Because writers Matt Lopez, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard, Lawrence Konner, Mark Rosenthal and director Jon Turteltaub, make Dave so initially reluctant to participate in this adventure, the audience feels emotionally detached. Unfortunately, too, Jay Baruchel lacks Nicolas Cage’s charisma so there’s little mentor/student chemistry brewing between them. Whatever excitement exists is generated by inventive stunts, visual special effects and splashy cinematography. As a result, the loud, disjointed concept, filled with pyrotechnics, resembles the dumbly cheesy “Prince of Persia” which was also produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and totally lacking in the artistry that used to signify Walt Disney movies, as opposed to vehicles for future Magic Kingdom rides.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is an incoherent 5, one of the summer’s major disappointments.
