Sunday, August 22, 2010

Movie Review: The Sorcerer's Apprentice


Life is funny sometimes. I was really excited about "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" earlier this summer, but then it was getting such low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes that I decided to skip it. Then last week, fellow blogger and movie lover Nuke went to see it with his kids and he loved it. So, armed with this new piece of information, my excitement for this play on the Disney classic was renewed, and today, my oldest son and I saw it.

"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is loosely based on Disney's Fantasia...in fact they even pay homage to the "cleaning scene" in this movie. Nicholas Cage stars as Balthazar Blake, one of 3 apprentices of Merlin. Blake is charged with finding Merlin's successor. In Dave Stutle (Jay Baruchel), Balthazar believes he has found that successor. It's up to Balthazar and Dave to stop the evil Horvath (Alfred Molina) from raising Morgana Le Fay and destroying the world as we know it.

This movie was just about perfect. It was really funny, had some good action and effects, and even worked in a pseudo love story. I've really gone back and forth on whether this is a 4 or 5 star movie, but I finally settled on 4.4ish. It wasn't quite 5 star worthy, but it was really good. It's the rare movie, lately, where I've found Nicholas Cage to be not annoying. I really like Alfred Molina as Horvath, and Jay Baruchel is the perfect nerd turned hero. I think the only reason I didn't go 5 stars with this is I wanted a little more, and then there was that cleaning scene which was just silly.

On the 9 year old front, my son said it's his new favorite movie. At PG, I think it's appropriate for most kids, probably 8 and older. There are a few scary parts that I think would prevent some younger kids from seeing it. Overall though, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is a really good movie and one that we will add to our family's DVD collection soon.

1 comment:

Nuke said...

Ditto. Glad you enjoyed it, even after I potentially brought your expectations up too high.