From about the only part of Fantasia that isn’t a total snoozer comes The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, an overlong Walt Disney fantasy-adventure with special effects shooting out of every orifice. Nicolas Cage essays the role of the sorcerer half of the equation; Jay Baruchel, the apprentice.
Cage is Balthazar Blake, a thousands-year-old magician for the powers of good (yet he can’t do anything about his stringy, homeless-man hairdo), while Baruchel is Dave, a New York nerd who speaks so nasally, you’d think this was a 110-minute advertisement for Breathe Right strips. He’s also the chosen one to help Blake in the fight against bad, a magician named Whorebath. Correction: Horvath (Alfred Molina).
They’re all fighting for control of something called a “grimhole.” (Can you say that in a Disney film?) Distracting Dave are his hormones; his magic wand grows for his childhood crush, bland blonde Becky Barnes (Teresa Palmer). He impresses her by playing musical Tesla coils. When she’s coming over, he has to clean up the place lickety-split, allowing the film to re-create Mickey Mouse’s ill-fated, abracadabra approach to housekeeping, but only after a shot of a dog urinating.
Apprentice reunites Cage with his National Treasure franchise director Jon Turteltaub, and you’ll wish they had made a third one of those instead. Especially when they had the smarts to cast the fetching Monica Bellucci, yet give her maybe five minutes of screen time (all clothed, at that). The only magic in it is that it comes to an end. —Rod Lott
Fantasia boring??? Did you see the same version I did? Are you confusing Fantasia with Fantasia 2000, which was boring?? Try watching it again when you mature a little.
And I agree completly with you review of Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
I’ve always thought Fantasia as the animated version of 2001: A Space Oddysey–a transcendent leap forward for cinema that also happens to be really fucking dull if you’re not completely stoned.