Liverpool Daily Post film review: The Sorcerers apprentice

Aug 13 2010 Liverpool Daily Post

HALFWAY through Jon Turteltaub’s fast- paced yarn, the eponymous hero calls upon what little magical knowledge he possesses to command an army of mops to clean his secret hideaway.

It only takes a few notes of Paul Dukas’s rhythmic orchestral work, featured most famously in the Disney animation Fantasia, for us to realise enchanted cleaning tools and endless buckets of sloshing water are a recipe for disaster, or a sizeable insurance claim.

Like so much in the film, this well-orchestrated scene promises copious tongue-in-cheek thrills, but doesn’t quite deliver.

Certainly, Turteltaub’s film has its pleasures including a Chinatown dragon on poles that metamorphoses into an actual mythical beastie that rampages through the New York district, and some droll humour.

However, the screenwriters’ weak potion of family-friendly action, comedy and romance doesn’t linger in the memory for long. As a boy, Dave Stutler (Cherry) wanders into an antiques store and has a strange conversation with its owner, Balthazar Blake (Cage), who reveals the youngster is to become a great wizard – the Prime Merlinian – and defeat the forces of evil under the control of evil Morgana Le Fay (Krige).

Before Balthazar can begin the youngster’s tuition, evil rival Maxim Horvath (Molina) intervenes and a fight ensues, trapping both inside a magical urn.

Ten years later, Dave (now played by Baruchel) is a brilliant physics student.