SORCERER’S APPRENTICE international trailer is stupid, predictable
SORCERER’S APPRENTICE international trailer is stupid, predictable
Mar 29
Jon Turteltaub made the National Treasure movies, both of which were terrible, though the first one was slightly less terrible than the second; Jerry Bruckheimer has been known to churn out duds alongside gems in his ceaseless efforts to bring loud, dumb action movies to our screens; and Nicolas Cage is, well, Nicolas Cage, whose film record is about as patchy as Bruckheimer’s. So what do you get when you mash all three together and try to make a(nother) American Harry Potter? Well, judging by this trailer, the results are pretty naff.
The basic premise is eye-rollingly familiar. Geeky science dweeb / otherwise nice guy finds out he’s actually a super-powered wizard destined to save the world fryada yada blah blah. Nicolas Cage plays the master sorceror who growls “You’re a wizard, Harry,” and Jay Baruchel plays the dweeb who looks back wide-eyed and says “I’m a what?” while Alfred Molina shows up and rasps in a British accent about the dichotomy of good and evil vs power and control (you can tell he’s the bad guy because he’s British — oh and he’s also made of insects [!]). Goodness me, haven’t I seen this movie before? It’s kind of like Harry Potter crossed with Constantine with a little bit of Nicolas Cage thrown in.
And really, isn’t Nicolas Cage entirely unsuitable for this kind of picture, what with all the magic and heroism and all that jazz? Didn’t we show in National Treasure and Ghost Rider that his sardonic and expressionless style isn’t built for big effects-driven family pictures? I totally don’t buy it when Cage claims to have scoured the entire planet looking for this one little dweeb; it’s just a little implausible, statistically, that the two most powerful good-guys in the world are American. Shouldn’t Cage’s character be played by, like, Jackie Chan or something? And what’s up with Jay Baruchel suddenly becoming the Hollywood “it” guy? Since Knocked Up we’ve seen him in everything from Tropic Thunder to How To Train Your Dragon and the upcoming She’s Out Of Your League, and his geek-chic schtick is running thin.
All right, sorry, I’ll try and keep an open mind, but really, with such an inane trailer tha’ts this full of cliches it’s hard not to get a little bit cynical. Look, how about I admit that I thought the music was pretty cool? There you go, it’s not all bad.
Find out just how bad The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is on the 16th of July 2010 in the US and the 13th of August in the UK; no Australian release date yet
