‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ is designed on a very clear and often used formula of the Disney family movie with special effects, and it holds no surprises – in any case neither too bad, nor too good ones. A murky magicians legend told in a rather confuse manner sets the action some 13 centuries ago, then another prologue ten years before the action introduces the second set of characters who meet in contemporary Manhattan for a less than plausible magician film, with dragons and iron hawks fighting to save mankind. If it sounds kind of stupid this is because so it is. You do not expect too much logic in these scripts nowadays.
source http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0963966/
One does expect however magic to come from different sources in such movies, and I mean cinematographic magic. Special effects maybe, and here the film delivers at least in part with some nice ideas with a slight retro nuance. Sympathizing with the characters, here the success is partial, Cage is OK but the main young lead (Jay Baruchel) is as awful as a young nerd can be in real life and he could not convince me how the girl (Teresa Palmer, OK as well) fell for him with all his magic powers. We are thus left wondering why talents like Cage or Monica Bellucci sign for such films, and the answer is that they need to make a living while waiting for the next better script.
(video source DisneyMovieTrailers)
And yet, towards the final I started to care. This is not little thing taking into account the artificial characters and story. The final action scene was well done also. The other really good moment is the reference to the other apprentice, the one from the classical animated ‘Fantasia’ of Disney. If this film brought that superb classic to the attention of some young generation movie goers, than it had met at least one good purpose.