Directed by Jon Turteltaub. Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Monica Bellucci, Alice Krige. Disney.
Decent Films Ratings
| Overall Recommendability |
?B |
|---|---|
| Artistic/ Entertainment Value |
? |
| Moral/Spiritual Value (+4/-4) |
? +0 |
| Age Appropriateness |
?Kids & Up* |
External Ratings
| MPAA | ?PG | USCCB | ?NA |
|---|
Content advisory: Fantasy action violence and mildly frightening scenes, some mild rude humor and brief cursing.
NCRegister.com Web Exclusive: The full text of this review is currently available at NCRegister.com.
By Steven D. Greydanus
The first good thing about The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is that it isn’t called The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Oath of the Dragon Ring or The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Nesting Dolls of Doom.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s penchant for turning unlikely source material into high-concept supernatural action-comedy-romance popcorn movies with unwieldy, franchise-friendly two-part titles is well established. Already he’s done theme park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl) and more recently video games (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time). Now he’s given us what is surely the first-ever supernatural action-comedy-romance popcorn movie based on a classic Mickey Mouse cartoon. I’m trying to think what even unlikelier source material he might turn to next.
If it doesn’t rise to the level of the first Pirates of the Caribbean — for several reasons, among them that there’s no recapturing the bottled lightning of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow — The Sorcerer’s Apprentice gets right almost everything that Prince of Persia got wrong. It’s nonsense, but it’s entertaining nonsense, just like Prince of Persia wasn’t. The stars are charismatic and likable, and the romantic leads have real chemistry. The special effects are visually splendid. Alfred Molina, the best thing in both movies, gets to be the big bad guy instead of a minor supporting character.
The screenplay, much abused for its multiple writers, is peppered with laugh-out-loud humor and eccentric charm. I love the moment when the villain appears in the hero’s apartment after escaping a ten-year imprisonment during which his afflictions included sharply curtailed reading material. What it was, and his pitiless commentary on it, is a goofy ray of wit that’s not atypical of the movie’s sensibilities. A throwaway line in a scene in which the villain and a sidekick try to get information about the hero from a college administrator contains what is now my all-time favorite allusion to Star Wars in another movie.
