Review of The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010) by Chads — 15 Jul 2010

From a park bench, Balthazar(Nicolas Cage), a former nesting doll prisoner enjoying his first meal in a thousand years, can see that Becky(Teresa Palmer), a college radio deejay who is heading toward the subway after a night of indie rock proselytizing, is clearly out of Dave's league, so he waves a pickle(it's not an especially large pickle) at his apprentice because he knows a little overcompensation couldn't hurt the physics nerd's chances for an intimate relationship.

What if she's a size queen? And boy, does Dave(Jay Baruchel) overcompensate big time, as the bling on his finger turns the one-time laughingstock of the fifth grade into a powerful conjurer of magic, which more than makes up for the boy's slight physique and small "pickle".

Right away, the ring pays off dividends, when Dave apprehends a mugger who had just stolen Becky's bling that had belonged to her grandmother, and as a result, proves Balthazar right since now the NYU student positions himself as a potential suitor.

At first, Dave overcompensates with brains(good enough to be her good friend), when he restores the radio station's low wattage signal, enabling Becky to broadcast her show. (She seems more Maroon 5 than Fleet Foxes.

) But now that Dave understands what being the Prime Meridian could entail, this seemingly unapproachable girl is no longer out of his league. There's a small problem, though. Telling a beautiful girl that you're the second coming of Merlin, in most cases, would be an automatic dealbreaker, and this is where "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" errs dramatically.

The film should have established an interim period in which Becky thinks Dave's childhood tormentors were right to dismiss the boy as a weirdo(the incident at Arcana Cabana). It would have made the final sequence of action all the more galvanizing, in which she'd realize that the Tesla boy was telling her the truth.

But Becky learns about Dave's secret at the wrong time, rendering his pronouncement into an anti-climactic reveal. That's because Cage is the star, so the apprentice's desperate need to overcome his shortcomings can't upstage Balthazar's second chance at love with Veronica(Monica Belucci).

As Dave withstands Morgan's best shot, then, in return, goes on the offensive, the filmmaker needs Becky for corresponding reaction shots, but since "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" never loses focus on the relationship between teacher and student, it's Balthazar's reaction shots that matter.

Had Becky witnessed Dave's duel to the death with Morgan(Alice Krige), Baruchel would have stolen the movie away from Cage.