The Sorcerer's Apprentice

After The Bad Lieutenant (and adaptation, and the rock, and the clips I've seen of Wicker Man, heck even after Con Air) Nic Cage has won pretty much permanent immunity from me (as much as the National treasure films have sorely tested that statement), so when I saw that he was starring in a Jerry Bruckheimer produced film playing a wizard I was hopeful that there would be enough trademark Cage insanity to offset what was a mediocre, at best, premise. The reviews were mixed to say the least, and that's probably the best way to think of the film. Its pretty up and down, and feels like they cut quite a few scenes in order to get down to its sub-ninety minute run time. Still, even though Cage feels restrained (I mean he's playing a two thousand year old wizard in New York, he should be anything but restrained) there's still enough touches to make the film watchable. If anything some of the throw-away gags (a modern wizard is posing on a Magic - The Gathering poster) are actually fairly clever. Its not quite enough to make me call The Sorcerer's Apprentice a good film, but its moderately entertaining and has enough Cage so that if I saw it on a plane I wouldn't be wholly disappointed.

Additional Note: I thought about this a bit more and I think the real reason the film isn't successful is that they try to force it to be a big budget action film, when the most interesting aspects are the character gags, and the few times they let Cage, Molina, Jay Baruchel, and Toby Kennel riff. Had this not been produced by Disney and Bruckheimer I think there actually could have been something interesting about an insane Wizard training a physics nerd in modern day new york. Probably would have been infinitely quirkier, with less rote action sequences and cliched love story. On the other at least they didn't cast Kevin James.