tek's rating: ¾

The Sorcerer's Apprentice (PG)
Disney Movies; Disney Wiki; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Disney+; Google Play; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 2010, but I didn't see it until 2024. It didn't do that well critically, which I think is a shame, because I liked it.

It starts in the year 740 AD, when Merlin had three apprentices: Balthazar (Nicolas Cage), Veronica (Monica Bellucci), and Horvath (Alfred Molina), the latter of whom betrayed Merlin to his nemesis, Morgana le Fay (Alice Krige). She kills Merlin, and as he was dying he gave his magical ring to Balthazar, who would then spend centuries searching for the child who would inherit Merlin's power, becoming the Prime Merlinean, the only person who could permanently defeat Morgana. Meanwhile, Veronica sucked Morgana's soul into her own body, which Morgana then tried to take control of. So Balthazar trapped them both in a nesting doll called the Grimhold. Over the years, he would trap more of Morgana's followers, or Morganians, in the Grimhold.

In 2000, there's a 10-year-old boy named Dave Stutler, who has a crush on a girl named Becky Barnes. While on a field trip with his class, Dave leaves the group for a reason I won't go into, and winds up in an antique shop, where he meets Balthazar. Merlin's ring, which is in the shape of a dragon, comes to life and attaches itself to Dave's finger, marking him as the Prime Merlinean. But Dave accidentally releases Horvath from the Grimhold, and he has a magical battle with Balthazar. That ends with both sorcerers being trapped for ten years in an urn. Meanwhile, Dave goes on with his life.

In 2010, Dave (Jay Baruchel) is a physics student at NYU. One day, he runs into Becky (Teresa Palmer), whom he hasn't seen in ten years, and reintroduces himself. The two of them run into each other a few times throughout the movie (mostly because Dave is low-key stalking her), and they become closer. Meanwhile, Horvath and Balthazar are released from the urn, and both want to find Dave and the Grimhold. Horvath wasn't to release Morgana so she can enact a spell that would bring to life an army of dead Morganians, and take over the world. Balthazar begins training Dave to become a sorcerer. Horvath recruits a sorcerer named Drake Stone to help him against Balthazar and Dave. And... lots of other stuff happens that I don't feel the need to detail. Suffice to say, the good guys win in the end. Oh yeah, and the whole movie was sort of vaguely inspired by one segment of Fantasia, and there's a scene in the movie that's directly based on that segment.

Well, I thought it was a fairly entertaining story, with decent special effects, and... I don't know what else to say. It was just fun. I wish I had deeper insights than that.


fantasy index