What can I say, other than it ranks in the top three of my favorite movies so far this year?
Jay Baruchel plays Dave, a guy who gets swept up in a battle of mages spanning a millenia. As a child, he stumbles upon Balthazar (Nicolas Cage), an eccentric antique shop owner who presents him with a strange artifact that, when it activates in Dave's presence, reveals Dave to be, essentially, the heir of Merlin himself. But when Dave accidentally unleashes Horvath (Alfred Molina) from his magical prison, Balthazar traps both himself and Horvath within a jar for ten years, at which point both reappear, and one sets out to train Dave while the other seeks to kill him. It's your typical zero-to-hero plotline seen a million times, but gosh darnit, it's one of my favorites.
What made the film so appealing was the character of Dave. This is the second film this year in which Jay Baruchel plays a kind of nerdy antithesis to your usual muscle-bound hero (the first being Dreamworks' truly brilliant How to Train Your Dragon, which comes to DVD and Blu-Ray mid-October, so get ready). This is the kind of hero to whom I relate without question - brainy and clever without being the type of over-exaggerated character who trips over his lab coat and always wears tape on his glasses. Dave is a teaching assistant/grad student (I think; it wasn't completely clear) for a physics class, where he meets the girl on whom he had an enormous crush around the time when he first found his magic ring ten years ago. He even has his own lab, where he plays around with tesla coils in a manner not all that unlike what the band Arc Attack did on America's Got Talent this past season (Watch them here. It's freaking awesome). Something about Jay Baruchel's voice just works. He has this sarcastic, self-depricating sound to him, like he's been told all his life by guys bigger and stronger than him that he's a tiny little nothing, that makes him both hilarious and completely relateable all at once.
The other aspect of The Sorcerer's Apprentice that hooked me was its use of magic. In explaining magic to Dave, Balthazar uses science as a way to describe the forces at work behind his ability to, say, set a parking ticket aflame from across the street. I spent half the movie oooing and awwwing at the special effects and the other half geeking out over their explainations.
I have to say, this role actually suited Nicolas Cage better than I ever would have thought. Remember the face of the sorcerer in the Fantasia segment?
His eyes tell everything about him; they are more of his character than the whole rest of him combined. Nic Cage's performance here is largely the same, and I don't mean that in a bad way. He has this far-off, distracted look that suits his 1500-year-old character perfectly. There's also a weariness to him that may not have been acted or intentional, but it was perfect.
See! Look at those eyes!
And Alfred Molina as the bad guy? Splendid. He can do no wrong. Just watch Spider-Man 2 if you don't believe me. He's the guy with four mechanical tentacles sprouting from his back. Even Horvath's own evil apprentice, a sort of David-Blaine-meets-Billy-Idol sort of guy (played by Toby Kebbell), fit right in and made for an amusing foil to Molina's uptight character.
There were only two real downsides, but both can be overlooked if you're feeling particularly forgiving. The first is the writing. While it wasn't terrible, many of the lines felt generic or just lame. It was a testament to all three of the primary actors that any of their dialogue didn't sound utterly absurd, like when Balthazar tells Dave, "I have been searching all over the world for you. You're going to be a force for good and a very important sorcerer. But for now, you're my apprentice." Only Nicolas Cage's lightly-amused tone could have pulled that off. The second was Monica Bellucci and her love triangle with Balthazar and Horvath. Actually, the love triangle subplot was fine, but her acting was awful. It was like the director just said "here, look pretty and think about toasters while Nic puts this necklace on you." She had "paycheck" written all over her face in every scene, or whatever the word for "paycheck" is in French. Chèque de paie, I shouldn't wonder. They always just take English words and screw around with the spelling, like mon chat for "my cat". Everyone should just learn English and be done with it.
J'appelle la capacité à parler l'anglais!!!
Anyway, The Sorcerer's Apprentice is way better than most of the critics have painted it. It's not especially original or well-written, but it doesn't take itself too seriously, it's well-acted (by the characters who have more than five minutes of screentime) and it has lots of heart. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and the kid who starts the movie as a zero ends it as a hero. It's my wife's favorite film so far this year, so see it for her. She's too cute to refuse.
I just saw the movie and I would have to agree that it isn't the best but it does have a certain feel to it. And by the way, your last statement if very sweet, your wife is a very lucky woman.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I appreciate your post. She insists that you are right, that she is a lucky woman, and just as I insisted that yes, she IS too cute to refuse, she pointed out a small pile of laundry that she had asked me to clean up just minutes before, so thank you for your accidental sense of good timing.