The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Inspired by an episode within Disney’s Fantasia, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice follows dorky college student Dave (Jay Baruchel) as he finds himself caught up in a centuries old battle between two magicians – one good (Nicolas Cage’s Balthazar Blake) and one bad (Alfred Molina’s Maxim Horvath). There’s little doubt that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice fares best in its opening half hour, as filmmaker Jon Turteltaub does a nice job of setting up the various characters and the admittedly outlandish nature of their exploits. Baruchel’s appealing performance is matched by Cage’s expectedly idiosyncratic turn as Balthazar, while Molina is certainly quite effective as the movie’s sinister villain. And although the film’s midsection does seem to be bogged down with a series of increasingly needless training sequences, Turteltaub does a nice job of buoying the viewer’s interest by offering up several entertaining stand-alone sequences (eg Dave’s encounter with a cocky mugger). It’s only as the narrative chugs into its special effects-laden final third that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice starts to become a disappointingly repetitive and flat-out dull piece of work, as the film is slowly but surely dominated by progressively over-the-top action set pieces that ultimately drain the viewer’s interest and enthusiasm. The end result is a watchable endeavor that does seem to have been designed to appeal primarily to small children, with the engaging performances generally preventing the movie from sinking into all-out tedium.

** out of ****