Academic

Friday afternoon we were babysitter-less, so the big kids and I went to see The Sorceror's Apprentice.  The basic story line is one that is used repeatedly these days:  young man/boy is clueless and out-of-place in real world, finds out he is in reality a special chosen "something," struggles briefly in disbelief or denial, then accepts role with all the responsibility, becomes victorious.  (See, e.g., Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Clash of the Titans, etc.)  Here, our hero David is a physics geek at NYU who has opted out of the social scene after a public humiliation ten years ago, brought about by his first encounter with Balthazar, the sorceror.  Of course, by the end of the movie David will save the day (and the world), with his physics geekiness.  And get the girl.

I thought parts of the movie were really, really cool.  The premise is that Merlin (yes, that Merlin) taught three sorcerors (Balthazar, Horvath and Veronica), but Horvath turned on the other two and joined forces with Merlin's nemesis Morgana.  Balthazar ends a battle with them by encasing Morgana (along with Veronica) in a nesting doll, then Horvath in the next-bigger nesting doll, etc.  After 1000 years, Balthazar has trapped several "Morganians" in the layers of the by-now-quite-large nesting doll.  Horvath escapes and is set on unleashing Morgana in order to wage an end-of-the-world takeover.  I thought the nesting doll thing, with evil villains being unleashed in a series, was really cool.

I also liked the science aspect of it.  Here, what we consider magic is treated as simple physics, plus a little telekinesis, which is a result of sorceror's being able to use parts of their brain that others can't.  (This theme actually isn't completely consistent throughout the movie, but whatever.)  Our good sorceror's apprentice is a scientist.  Our evil sorceror's apprentice is a celebrity magician "entertainer."  And the scientist wins, using everyday science.

What's not to like?  The dialogue.  (O.K., there is a setup of a Star Wars joke that Luke and I saw coming a good two minutes before the punchline.  Lame.)  The unconvincing acting.  Jay Baruchel plays our goofball hero, and he just annoyed me.  He looks like he's squinting, wincing and crying at the same time in almost every scene.  And the pretty girl falls in love with him, but we're not sure why.  Because he's handy around electricity?  Not convinced. 

And finally, it is hard to like the very lame homage to Mickey Mouse's Sorceror's Apprentice from Fantasia.  I have to admit that I did not realize that the story of the Sorceror's Apprentice goes back to a poem by Goethe (yes, that Goethe), which blossomed into a Mickey Mouse short, which blossomed into a segment in Fantasia.  What was really fun to watch in a cartoon translates here into a blissfully short, but not-so-entertaining broom sequence.

But in the end, my eight-year old boy loved it.  Loved it.  He sat on the edge of his seat the entire time.  Talked about it all day.  There you go.