This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

Don’t tell my wife, but I love being wrong. At least when it comes to films. I’ll admit it, I came to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice prepared to hate it. It had all the hallmarks of a film that would rub me the wrong way—produced by explosive style over substance Jerry Bruckheimer and starring hammy overactor Nicholas Cage. Yet throughout the film’s running time, the word I kept returning to again and again was “thrilling.”

Of all the Walt Disney properties out there, a sliver from the oft maligned and just as often underestimated Fantasia would probably not make many peoples’ lists for an obvious feature length adaptation. Yet somehow producer Bruckheimer and director Jon Turteltaub saw potential in a 10-minute-long segment about a lazy and unqualified wizard’s apprentice (played by Mickey Mouse) who, rather than employ elbow grease to clean his room, decides to try magic. The results, if you’ll remember, were more than a little messy.

From that cluster of images, the filmmakers went about building a story centered around an immortal sorcerer named Balthazar Blake (Cage) who has spent centuries looking for a youth who will inherit not only his wisdom and powers, but that of his late master, Merlin himself. That young man is Dave (Jay Baruchel, he with the big ears to fill), an NYU physics student who suddenly finds himself embroiled in an age old quest to rid the world of Blake’s arch-nemesis, Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina), bent on world domination. As the unlikely and often reluctant protégé is given a crash course in magic, he’ll try desperately to survive his training, get the girl and save New York City.

Director Turteltaub has a penchant for mythology, be it proto-American or post-Romana Britania seguewaying into contemporary Manhattan. While his work rarely does it for me (I want to like the National Treasure films, but like most things bearing the mark of Bruckheimer, find them “moronic, overblown scavenger hunt(s) masquerading as a high concept social studies lesson(s).”) Unlikely as it seems, Turteltaub gets better the further from reality he gets.

Turns out Nicholas Cage, who has spent the better part of a decade humiliating himself on film, has had a very good year and now three very good performances (including Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans and Kick-Ass). As with his director, Cage is more enjoyable the further he distances himself from normal. It has only been in playing extreme characters that give full rise to the actor’s quirks and idiosyncrasy that he has finally found a means to thrive.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice skips right over the whole “homage” debate by mimicking scenes from your favorite movies and then letting you know it knows that you know. Get it? From Indiana Jones to Star Wars to a send up reminiscent of the end of the first Ghostbusters (and, of course, the 1940 animated film on which it is based), The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has a marvelous tongue in cheek quality that could have gone from sassy to tacky real fast, but somehow never crosses the line. There is also some fun bits hinting at but never quite invoking Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Sorcery in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is simply science beyond our ken, leading to a great retort in the film’s climactic battle.

It’s not that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a particularly great film. But it is a surprisingly satisfying one. An epic comedy adventure, it is chock full of great effects and unexpectedly dramatic circumstances. In the end, it is humorous and exciting, casting a spell of unrepentant fun.

© Copyright 2010 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by John Turteltaub
Starring: Nicholas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Monica Belluci, Teresa Palmer, Toby Kebbell
Rated PG for fantasy action violence, some mild rude humor and brief language.
Running Time: 110 minutes