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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Magically Likeable

One of these guys already saw wardrobe that morning, the other just showed up to set. Guess which is which.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Summertime is a wonderful season for hiding from the baking, burning heat inside a cool, dark theater and being transported to endless imaginative worlds. Sometimes these worlds can be overwhelmingly complex and force you to think deeply about everything going on, and those create a very particular kind of enjoyment, but the season of the sun seems to lean more towards movies that allow you to put your brain on cruise control, sit back, sip your Coke and try not to smile. This recent cinematic offering is definitely one of those.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice follows the story of a young man, Dave, who finds out at too young an age that he is chosen by destiny to become an all-powerful sorcerer for the side of good in a millennia-long battle for the safety of the world. His mentor, Balthazar, does his best to prepare him for the upcoming battles, while also keeping Dave’s focus off the one thing impossible to resist, love.

This popcorn presentation is brought to us from the minds at Disney who seem hell-bent on plunging the depths of the Mouse House catalog for anything and everything that could be transformed into a full-length feature film. The title of the film is taken from the famous scene in Fantasia where Mickey Mouse enchants all the mops, brooms and assorted cleaning products to do his chores for him. That moment is directly lifted up and dropped into this live-action semi-adaptation, and actually fits surprisingly well, but the rest of the story is completely fresh, at least where previous Disney stories are concerned. I can’t blame Disney for their addiction to recycling, it certainly worked well with their multi-million dollar Pirates franchise, but I don’t see this one landing as well with audiences and certainly very little in terms of continuing sequels.

Now, before I get into where the movie takes its many missteps, let me engage you on why I still gave it a fairly high ranking. Jay Baruchel is truly riding the roller-coaster of success right now and while some may complain that he is typecast and plays virtually the same person in each film, the same can be said of Steve Carell and many others. If they play the part well, let them play on. Baruchel epitomizes the adorably awkward geek who never sees himself as cool as the people around him do. The rest of the story notwithstanding, it is always enjoyable for me to watch characters like these grow and step into their confidence and full potential. It’s a classic and well-used storyline for sure, but that’s because people respond to it consistently. He holds the heart of the film tenderly in his charmingly goofy expressions and timing. On the other hand, Nicholas Cage delivers what we’ve come to expect from him, a quirky, oddity of a person, yet performed with the commitment and dedication that can almost only come from someone equally quirky and odd in real life. Cage has made a long and prolific career from taking roles almost no one saw as playable and inserting a real person where only a caricature was found before. That being said, if you weren’t a fan of him before, he doesn’t add anything here that will sweep you to the other side.

With the good stuff resting comfortably above, here are some of the downsides to this spellbound selection. Numerous plot holes are completely ignored as the movie races to keep up with a fairly energetic pace. This actually pales in comparison to the story points and moments of character development that could’ve been easily achieved if the writing was just that much tighter. In scene after scene I felt there were set-ups that were not paid off and you just feel the air slip out of scenes that had real potential. The ending makes painfully little sense when weighed against all the information given throughout the film and you once again feel things really needed to play out a different way to achieve full redemption. I’m not going to say the version playing out in my head would’ve worked better, you never really know, but it certainly made more sense to me.

The End of the Page Recommendation: If you are a real fan of either of the two main cast members, this should give you a smile somewhere along the way, but keep some change in your pocket and catch the matinee (or even wait until DVD).

What did you think? Feel any comparison’s to National Treasure? Where does it rank on you Cage scale?

Fake G.I.Joe’s to Real G.I.Joe’s: A Day in the life of…(4/4)

1 – Two more big names have been added to the G.I. Joe roll call. Brendan Fraser is reportedly doing a cameo as Gung Ho, while Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will be coming on as Shipwreck. Seeing both these people dropped into the film is a boost to my interest, but the character choices seem a tad mixed up. “The Rock” seems perfect for Gung Ho, while Brendan seems more suited for the random comedy from Shipwreck. Ah, who am I kidding, as long as their is some dude behind a blue hood screaming about Cobra taking over the world, I’m gonna be thrilled. [via ComingSoon]

2 – This is probably only truly funny to a small group of people, but one of them is me, so I get to post it. It’s a mash-up video of footage from Spongebob Squarepants and audio from an anime title called Deathnote. Even if you don’t know that particular anime, if you ever wanted to see Spongebob go psychotic from power and corruption, it’s worth a chuckle. [via GorillaMask via CollegeHumor]

3 – Foamy the pissed off, ranting, singing, vulgarity slinging squirrel is back! This time he takes on the topic of ‘Used’ vs. ‘New’ pricing. Well spoken, you tree hopping maniac.

4 – Sometimes people and their creativity scare me. Then what scares me even more is I want to buy some of their stuff. Check out what Jessica Joslin can make with a small amount of metal, musical machinery and bones. I think she might have seen Pan’s Labyrinth too many times. [via JoshSpear]

5 – Here’s a funny story. A crazy out of work actress writes a tell-all book detailing all the crazy people she’s worked with and the morally questionable things they did. This silly woman then publishes the book and gets all huffy and defensive when some of the people mentioned inside get mad about items they labeled “incorrect, blown out of proportion, or just plain false.” The kicker to the story is the woman is then taken to court in England where the libel laws are less strict and she’s made to apologize and pay out a huge sum to a charity chosen by one of her old cast mates. I love happy endings, especially when the hero in the story is Nicholas Cage. Pwned![via Durden]

6 – This rattled me a little bit this morning. An FBI agent has been investigating the death of Sonny Bono, widely believed to be caused by his slamming into a tree while skiing, but this lone ranger has concluded that Sonny was actually the target of a well planned and perfectly executed mafia hit. Seriously? Maybe they had that tree specifically moved there early that morning knowing he would be plummeting down the hill in that very spot. Those would be the most clever assassins in history. Do they get awards for that? [via Starpulse]

7 – It’s like they’re looking in my window. [via Garfield Minus Garfield]

8 – Right on the heels of the Wargames sequel news, now the rumors are flying about a remake of our beloved Johnny 5 and the story of his birth in our world, Short Circuit. I don’t know why you would go back to this, since the humor and amazement over AI is nowhere near the place it was twenty years ago, but their first step in the remaking process has been to get the two original writers of the film. At least it has that going for it, but if I hear any mention of the robot being Johnny 6, I’m gonna cover the production offices in lava. [via ComingSoon]

9 – This video would have so much cooler if they had shown him actually shooting something with his homemade paintball tank. But, I give him credit for being motivated, ingenuous and honestly a rather scary individual. [via With Leather]

10 – It might seem weird to promote another t-shirt line when I help to run one of my own, but we must think of two things: 1) Helping others helps ourselves and 2) this shirt is just to perfect to not share with the world. [via OMG Tees]

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