"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" boils down to "The Karate Kid" meets "Harry Potter," with maybe a dash of "Ghostbusters" to keep it interesting. It's a Disney film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and you can easily assign every scene to one or the other.
Starring a mercurial Nicolas Cage and über-dork Jay Baruchel, it's an OK, family-oriented comedy action blockbuster with jokes and special effects troweled on to bolster its not-terribly-fresh story of magic and mentoring.
Cage, with hippie hair and a black leather trench coat, plays Balthazar Blake, a denizen of modern-day Manhattan who long ago was an apprentice to the great Merlin. Balthazar is guardian of a Russian-doll-like container holding many evil wizards, and his job is to make sure they don't get out.
One of Balthazar's fellow apprentices, the dashing but embittered Horvath (Alfred Molina), would be tickled to see the world wiped out and will do anything to get the container.
Balthazar meets decent but socially inept NYU physics student David (Baruchel), and, recognizing the young man's special powers, trains him as a sorcerer to help in the struggle.
Lots of wizardly fireballs are tossed as Balthazar tries to impart the tricks of the trade, and a sense of confidence, to slow learner David.
The special effects are OK but not unique -- wizards turn into, and emerge from, a grainy mist à la "The Mummy" -- and the same goes for most of the magic the wizards employ. However, director Jon Turteltaub pulls off a reasonably good car chase sequence and an entertaining Chinese New Year parade, and, in the "Ghostbusters" vein, makes affectionate use of some Big Apple landmarks such as the Chrysler Building.
There's a nice tip of the hat to the Mickey Mouse "Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence in "Fantasia," with its out-of-control magical mops. On the other hand, there's plenty of Bruckheimer overkill.
