THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE review

NICOLAS CAGE MONICA BELLUCCI
JAY BARUCHEL ALFRED MOLINA
DIR. JON TURTELTAUB
FANTASY 2010

Given that Hollywood has lost the ability to come up with new and original products, it is at least refreshing to see the House of Bruckheimer has chosen to draw from a 1797 poem by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and it’s previous celluloid adaptation, a sequence in Disney’s animated 1940 classic, Fantasia, (You know the one, where Mickey Mouse casts a spell to have all the mops start cleaning by themselves) for inspiration for their latest outing, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Of course, being a modern fantasy adventure film, we trade the cartoons for big budget CGI effects, add in Nicolas Cage as the ancient Sorcerer and have popular awkward guy Jay Baruchel to replace Mickey. And it works.
TSA is a Disney backed film also, and as such is family friendly; there is of course the colour and spectacle of the action, but there is an underlying moral story about believing in yourself that can never be driven in to our kids too much. The romantic angle between Baruchel’s apprentice Dave and his dream girl Becky (Teresa Palmer) is sweet without being irritatingly so but the love story between Cage’s Balthazar Blake and fellow Sorceress Veronica, (an underused Bellucci) never really hits it’s peak, despite being a crucial, motivating part of the story. The action is primarily effects driven spell casting between the main protagonists and the brilliantly villainous Maxim Horvath, (a perfectly cast Molina) but this doesn't get repetitive or as tedious as it can in genre cousin Harry Potter’s films. This could be due to TSA’s much shorter running time of 109 minutes against Potter’s two and a half days…
The car chase through New York is a clever blend of live action and CG, and will prove a popular sequence for some of the Dads who will enjoy the 1935 Rolls Royce (Cage’s own vehicle in reality), Ferrari 430 and the SLR Mercedes blasting through traffic while they wait for Monica Bellucci’s next scene.
All in all, an easy to watch, family friendly slice of escapism that parents won’t mind the kids watching again and again. And again. But only once the floors are mopped.
****