The Sorceror's Apprentice

I mentioned in my discussion of Leaving Las Vegas that it seems like a lifetime ago that Nicolas Cage was taken seriously as an actor. Mostly it has been his predilection for appearing in junk like The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which was was a depressing experience to watch. Not only is it apparent that Cage is simply doing it for the money, but it has a dreadful performance by Jay Baruchel in the title role.

The film is from Disney, which has cannibalized itself by using one of its iconic scenes from Fantasia, in which Mickey Mouse, as a sorcerer's apprentice, tries to use magic to clean up the castle and ends starting a flood. Incredibly, the Disney executives allowed director Jon Turteltaub to shit all over that scene by reproducing it in live-action, with the spastic Baruchel filling in for Mickey. If Mickey Mouse were dead, he'd be rolling in his cartoon grave.

The film is a bunch of nonsense about how Cage is a thousand-year-old sorcerer who once worked for Merlin along with Alfred Molina. The latter turned bad, so Cage locked him up in a nesting doll, along with Morgana Le Fey (Alice Krige). Merlin tells him to await the "Prime Merlinian" (I'm not making this up), who turns out to be Baruchel, a nerdy physics student. Together they must stop Molina and Morgana from taking over the world with dead people. Yeah, right.

Almost nothing about this film works; even the special effects seem tired. Baruchel is so unrelentingly annoying that you hope he dies in a horrible way, and Cage, with straggly hair and a perpetually bemused expression on his face, is no doubt ruing all those castles he bought that he has to pay for by doing crap like this.

And why cast Monica Belluci only to give her about five minutes of screen time?