The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Walt Disney) (2010)

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: July 14, 2010

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is the latest movie about an ordinary fellow — it’s almost always a fellow — who is, all of a sudden and to his great astonishment, dragged into an epochal, supernatural battle between good and evil. The fellow in question this time is the distinctly unpromising Jay Baruchel, a gangly Canadian ectomorph who got the girl (though not much of an audience) in “She’s Out of My League” and who trained the cartoon dragon in “How to Train Your Dragon.” Here he plays an N.Y.U. physics major named Dave who tinkers with a giant Tesla coil in his subterranean laboratory and pines for Becky (Teresa Palmer), a pretty music lover who was his childhood crush.

Meanwhile, though, Dave has learned that he is the Prime Merlinian, which means that “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is not just another dweeb/cutie romantic comedy, but also a phantasmagorical action picture in which bolts of lightning will shoot out of people’s hands, and ancient spells will be uttered to cataclysmic effect right on the streets of Manhattan. To spare you the full rehash: hundreds of years ago a bunch of bad wizards were stuffed into a Russian doll, including the really mean Morgana (Alice Krige) and the gorgeous Veronica (Monica Bellucci). Now two supermagicians, Balthazar Blake and Maxim Horvath, battle to let one of the ladies out of the doll — called the Grimhold, by the way — and keep the other one trapped inside.
The good news, if you are not a Monica Bellucci completist, is that the rival sorcerers are played by Alfred Molina and Nicolas Cage. Mr. Molina, who was perhaps a bit too sensitive as Doc Ock in “Spiderman 2,” attacks his villainous role, Maxim, with mustache-twirling relish. As Balthazar, Mr. Cage, having worked with the director, Jon Turteltaub, on the popular “National Treasure” series, refines the oddball intensity he brought to those pictures and mixes in new flavors of wackiness. If he has not quite approached a Christopher Walken level of sublime self-parody, Mr. Cage has at least established himself as the heir to Al Pacino in the crazy mentor pantheon.
But while Mr. Molina and Mr. Cage supply a measure of well-compensated eccentricity, their labors ultimately serve to emphasize the grinding mediocrity of the enterprise. The method of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is to string together pedestrian moments of explanation, comedy and emotion around noisy and derivative action sequences, some of which seem to go against the very premise of the movie. Why would Balthazar and Maxim — magicians who can fly, change shape and conjure force fields, fireballs and just about anything else they want — need to climb into cars and chase each other through the streets of New York?
I put that question to a colleague, who condescendingly replied, “because it’s a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.” Duh. But still. It’s stupid. At several points Balthazar intones that the fate of mankind hangs in the balance. But it never feels as if more were at stake than the bottom line of Jerry Bruckheimer Films and the Walt Disney Company, who seem to have confected this lumbering amusement in the hopes of picking up a little Harry Potter cash in the interval between “The Half-Blood Prince” and “The Deathly Hallows.”
It should be noted, though, that “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” does have a distinguished cultural pedigree, reaching back to Goethe’s poem, which inspired Paul Dukas’s orchestral composition, which in turn provided the music for perhaps the most memorable segment of Walt Disney’s “Fantasia.” Mr. Turteltaub does pay homage to that wonderful scene, in which Mickey Mouse tries to use his half-learned powers to do his chores, but the sight of Mr. Baruchel trying to bring rampaging mops under control can only suffer in comparison. The magic in this “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is loud, mechanical and uninspired.
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). The fate of mankind does not hang in the balance, and no one really gets hurt.

source :  http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/movies/14sorcerer.html