Wednesday, August 4, 2010

THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE




Fansty, adventure

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Jake Cherry: 10-year-old David "Dave" Stutler
Nicolas Cage: Balthazar Blake, a thousand year old sorcerer
Jay Baruchel: 20-year-old Dave Stutler, a physics student at New York University
Alfred Molina: Maxim Horvath, an evil sorcerer and Blakes’ arch-nemesis
Teresa Palmer: college student Rebecca “Becky” Barnes
Nicole Ehinger: Abigail Williams, a witch “in the last layer around the Grimhold”
Toby Kebbell: Drake Stone, a celebrated illusionist
and others no doubt

REVIEW
The target audience (children and young teenagers) seemed to enjoy it but I did not. Chances are they never saw the original Walt Disney version of Fantasia with Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice which is too bad because that was delightful whereas this modern day version is anything but.

To start with it is far too complicated to be taken seriously: just keeping track of the characters takes more effort than it is worth. Also it is too loud with lots of banging and crashing and general mayhem. In fact it is nothing but a series of computer generated effects popping up constantly. Hey too much is too much!

I left before losing all my hearing unable to take any more of it.

CLASSIFICATION
for fantasy action violence, some mild rude humor and brief language.

FOR NITPICKERS ONLY
• A title screen at the beginning of the movie says the year is 2000 but when the camera zooms in on the New York skyline the World Trade Center twin towers are not there.
• When Balthazar comes out of the urn he is not wearing a hat but in the very next scene one has magically appeared.

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