Review of The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010) by Devesh J — 10 Nov 2011

Well, I was always a little curious about this one since I first saw the trailer back before it came out, but for some reason never wanted to actually take the time to watch it until now. Overall I felt the movie tried too hard. It tried too hard to be relevant. Tried too hard to be awesome. Tried too hard to be funny. In short. It just tried too hard. Now, that's not to say that it didn't have parts that were awesome and funny. A lot of the effects and sorcery concepts were actually pretty dang awesome and realistic--which made sense, just reading on Wikipedia that they tried to do as many practical effects as possible to rely very little on CGI, which I applaud them for--like the Chinese dragon and the weird portable liquidy hole that Nicolas Cage throws down on the ground and hides in. And there were a couple parts that made me laugh. But by and large it was filled with stuff that, it felt, they were trying to force down my throat. And it just came across as obnoxious.

And the music. Oy. Now I can't rag on Trevor Rabin too much because he actually redeemed himself a little in my eyes with "I Am Number Four". But this soundtrack. I found that it was doing the same exact thing that the movie was doing. It was trying too hard. Trying to hard to be the next "Pirates of the Caribbean" soundtrack that billions of people would flock to. It even pretty heavily ripped OFF of POTC in a couple parts. It's like, when nothing really important is going on, you've got heavy percussion and bombastic brass and all I'm thinking is CAAAAAALM DOWN!!!!

If the movie and the soundtrack had just CALMED DOWN, both would have worked a whole lot better.

That said, after reading Nicolas Cage's driving force behind wanting to do this movie (it was his brain child) and the fact that he just basically wanted to do a movie where he was a sorcerer and did lots of cool magic stuff and battles and things.... I can respect that, because I can't say I wouldn't do the same if I were in his position. So that did bring some redemption to the movie in retrospect for me and allowed me to just appreciate that Cage just wanted to have fun. And seriously, the movie wasn't HORRIBLE, but it also wasn't as great as it could (and probably should) have been.

But anyway, I might have initially given it a 2 star rating, but now after reading Cage's reasoning behind it, I am obliged to give it a 3 star rating.

Oh, and... wow... I can't believe I actually found myself liking Teresa Palmer after she annoyed me so heckin' bad in "I Am Number Four".