Story: 3/5
Perception: 4/5
Rating: 3.5/5 (with some advantage upon Prince of Persia)
The new Disney/Bruckheimer The Sorcerer's Apprentice is like any other Disney, but on SFX steroids.
The story is quite linear, but with one or two didn't expect that moments. It's mainly about a physics nerd who is meant to be a great sorcerer, but first of all he'll need to learn to use his magic. This is where Cage comes up, him being his master. The purpose of all this is to stop another sorcerer to free a witch from a nesting doll, thus allowing her to cast a super-spell and rule the world.
The actors did their job decently, the main character masters his uncoordinated nerdiness without looking lame. Even Cage is likable, with his know-it-all teacher like mild arrogance. And Molina is simply genuine. I was disappointed by the girl, who was nearly void, lacking charisma; Gemma got to me ;)...I can't tell if she's worse that Megan Fox, but I must admit that I can't be 100% objective.
This brings us to the fun part: the effects. Like I said this movie is basically on steroids and there are some really awesome stuff, and some funny ones also. I can't say more and thus spoil the fun.
What I also liked is the physics/science - magic parallel, and some of the explanations and facts generated from this. You don't need spirits and other stuff like that to do magic; magicians are one sort of special people, and so are scientists. Let's not forget that many discoveries and inventions were and still are considered and, even blamed to be, magic.
All in all, a 110 min enjoyable story wrapped in a thick special effects layer. If you like magic and don't mind the Disney touch on a movie you should check it out in a theater. There's a short hint to a possible sequel after the credits, but if you're in a hurry it doesn't worth the trouble.
Almost unrelated fact:
this is a PG rated movie, well...when in a theater, as most people know, there are trailers before the movie, and the persons in charge of this decided that the best choice in this case would be a PG-13 (Salt), that was like a walk in the park comparated to the 2 R-rated movies (Piranha 3D, and the lame-looking Youth in Revolt - a totally prefer Baruchel over Cera, he was borderline OK in Juno and Superbad but he never grew up)
Stuff - Spoiler Alert!!!
The Cleaning Scene was cool - borrowed from Fantasia as I heard; and the big time magic tricks, like the car chase and the inanimate animals reanimation, were bad-ass.
Getting back to the girl: when he explained the whole situation to her, she didn't panic nor told him to go and get treated, she just went along like a sheep, not to mention the climbing up a tower to deflect an antenna which transmitted something that she couldn't see.
If you were wondering...a Tesla coil could really do those kinds of lightning bolts, the problem is: a kid would never have the means and permits to build such stuff. But I couldn't be more happier to see that his won through science, even though I saw it coming ;)
A good thing related to the story is the fact that the accomplishment of the main character is not 100% generated by love but more by a boost in self-esteem, which is more likely to be the true human nature.
Also, what is to learn from this is that good guys have friends, bad guys have people who can still be useful
Last but not least (for Persephone' sake), Monica Bellucci is getting older.
i kinda liked Prince of Persia better, even if as a guy that played the game I was waiting for stuff to happen that actually didn't (and that's good btw).
ReplyDeleteIt's just that it reminds me of transformers too much, and I always found the morfing of phantasy with real life really hard to make; I guess Harry Potter (the books) is one of the only place where I like how it's done.
then again, I do have excentric taste :p =))
the thing is that I was expecting a bit more from the PoP, so I was a tiny bit disappointed and I expected less from this one, that's why the advantage is on the Apprentice side
ReplyDeletefair enough :D
ReplyDelete