{"id":382,"date":"2010-07-14T16:35:25","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T22:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/2010\/07\/14\/the-sorcerers-apprentice-reviewed-by-cyndi-menegaz\/"},"modified":"2010-08-13T16:25:22","modified_gmt":"2010-08-13T22:25:22","slug":"the-sorcerers-apprentice-reviewed-by-cyndi-menegaz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/2010\/the-sorcerers-apprentice-reviewed-by-cyndi-menegaz\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Reviewed by Cyndi Menegaz"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Walt Disney Company’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice<\/em> reunites the National Treasure <\/em>team (producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Jon Turteltaub and star Nicholas Cage) in an energy-filled supernatural adventure complete with cool magic,\u00a0 fast cars and romance.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The story is loosely based on the beloved animated short of the same name seen in Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia<\/em>, which in turn was inspired by the\u00a01797 German poem by Johann Goethe.\u00a0 In the 2010 film version, we learn that Merlin the Magician had three apprentices:\u00a0 Horvath (Albert Molina), who betrays Merlin and sides with the evil Morgana;\u00a0 Victoria, who becomes trapped with Morgana in a vessel; and Balthazar (Nicholas Cage) who must locate the only sorcerer capable of destroying Morgana forever.\u00a0 So begins Balthazar’s centuries long quest which ends with his discovery of Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

At 20 years old, Dave is a socially awkward but brilliant physics student at NYU with a crush on Becky (Teresa Palmer), a girl far out of his league.\u00a0 How could he possibly be the descendant of the fabled Merlin, charged with saving the world from the clutches of evil?\u00a0 Balthazar soon has him on a crash course in the ways of magic – a cool blend of modern science and age-old sorcery – but Dave is a reluctant prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and high jinx ensue.\u00a0 Self-confidence is the one thing Balthazar can’t teach Dave, and it’s the one thing he’ll need to fulfill his destiny (and get the girl!)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Much of this story feels like we’ve seen it before – it’s certainly formulaic and crosses much traveled cinematic terrain.\u00a0 However, the characters and their relationships are engaging and their quest is just a whole lot of fun.\u00a0 Laughs are gratefully abundant and the special effects are worthy of the genre.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The film is geared for families, but due to creepy and possibly frightening depictions of supernatural beings and events, it’s most appropriate for children aged 10 and up.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Walt Disney Company’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice reunites the National Treasure team (producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Jon Turteltaub and star Nicholas Cage) in an energy-filled supernatural adventure complete with cool magic,\u00a0 fast cars and romance.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The story is loosely based on the beloved animated short of the same name seen in Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feature-film-reviews","category-new-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paSd8M-6a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/ranny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}