I am now convinced that the filmmakers behind this summer's crop of (aspiring) blockbusters got together before they began production and conspired to make sure that their movies would all be on roughly the same level in terms of general quality. This has truly been a summer of movies that are all good in their own way (to varying degrees), but none of which are really spectacular. Perhaps this is all some great conspiracy to ensure that Toy Story 3 would remain unchallenged as champion and Last Airbender would remain unchalenged as the most legendarily awful. However, even in the middle ground there's room for hierarchy, so if Predators is a lower middle class film and Despicable Me is upper middle, where does that leave Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice?
I'm going to go ahead and give Sorcerer's Apprentice the greatest praise I possibly can: it's like Flight of Dragons and Shanghai Noon had a child. These are two movies that I am incredibly fond of that are both on roughly mid-level in terms of (more or less) objective quality. Neither is really remembered outside of the internet, both take a deeper look than their contemporaries at tropes of classic adventure fiction, and either one is an excellent choice for those seeking a fun, simple, family friendly movie (assuming yours is not a family of puritans). Sorcerer's Apprentice shares (or will share) all of these similarities, but the family resemblance truly shows in the content: it has the "magic and science working together," angle of Flight of Dragons and has the "adventure genre buddy flick," element of Shanghai Noon. Sadly it never accomplishes either angle as well as its more straightforward parents, and is consequently unable to rise all that far above its fellow summer films, but even if it never achieves the level of prestige necessary to receive an inappropriate advertisement in a future blog entry, it's well worth seeing.
The plot concerns an awkward boy named Dave becoming an awkward man and then an awkward wizard. And that's not just a cute convenient joke; even when he's
attained ultimate power and is locked in climactic battle with the greatest force of evil in existence, he's deploying magic shields against dark magic in a pose that resembles a fourteen year old being beaten up for lunch money, but in many ways that's part of the charm. His magical instructor is Nicolas Cage as the centuries old apprentice of Merlin known as Balthazar. What's his character like? He's Nicholas Cage playing a good guy: he's sarcastic, bizarre, and fatherly. The other characters are hit and miss with some excellent villains (one of whom is played by Alfred Molina and another whose a cross between David Copperfield and Billy Idol) and some weak love interests, but the two leads have excellent chemistry as master and apprentice and the film wisely places the focus squarely on them.
As far as that silly bussiness of "serious criticism," goes, there's some hokey dialogue and some great jokes; there's some exposition that goes too fast and there's some really well executed character moments... you get the point. It's a mixed bag, but it's one of those mixed bags that was well mixed, with all the elements that work being key components brought to the forefront and those that don't being minor details shoved into the background. The faults are still noticeable, but the film does everything it can to make you forget about them almost as soon as you see them. The action scenes are the icing on the cake: well paced, mostly coherent, and very creative. Some elements of the plot may be incredibly predictable, but one thing you'll never be able to guess is what magic trick Cage and Molina are going to throw at each other next.
I reccomend Sorcerer's Apprentice, but honestly, I'm not entirely sure how many more reviews of this sort I have in me. I'm sick and tired of having to place a movie on the scale of mediocrity; I want a standout. I want a movie to review that's spectacular, for better or worse; something so bad or so good that I'd be left with a lasting impression. However, it wouldn't be right to let the disapointments of the season taint the appraisal of any movie, no matter how mediocre, and as far as middle of the road movies go, Sorcerer's Apprentice is one of the good ones. You won't cry, but you will laugh, and- like me- you won't find much to complain about, even if you might have liked to.
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