THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010
26
THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE
Dancing mops and tired plots
by Michael O’Sullivan
Despite some whiz-bang special effects and a moderately unhinged performance by Nicolas Cage as Balthazar Blake, an an- cient wizard at work in modern-day New York, one nagging question keeps popping up in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”: Where have I seen this before? The answer, in this flat-footed fantasy, is not what you might think. While it’s true that the live-action film is based loosely on Disney’s animated classic “Fantasia” (or at least the portion of that 1940 film that featured Mickey Mouse as a hapless wizard’s apprentice), the connec- tion is tenuous. This, despite a sequence in the new movie that depicts out-of-control animated mops and buckets, as in the old one. The CGI upgrade, altough visually im- pressive, lacks the charm of the hand- drawn original. It’s bigger, but far from bet- ter.
No, this “Apprentice” has far more re- cent antecedents. In its story line about a geeky wizard-in-training named Dave (Jay Baruchel) and his grizzled mentor (Cage), it shares large chucks of DNA with the “Harry Potter” series. Just like J.K. Row- ling’s hero, Dave is a kind of chosen one — a powerful yet unseasoned sorcerer known as the “Prime Merlinian” — who, prophecy foretells, will one day rise up to defeat the forces of black magic, in the person of evil sorcerer Horvath (Alfred Molina). Okay, so Horvath is no Lord Voldemort.
He’s kind of clownish, in fact, and has his own apprentice, a Vegas-style magician named Drake (Toby Kebbell). But as the movie’s chief evildoer, the sorceress Mor-
ROBERT ZUCKERMAN/COPYRIGHT DISNEY ENTERPRISES Try as he might, Nicolas Cage, left, with Jay Baruchel, can’t save “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” with his performance as a wizard.
gana le Fay, Alice Krige bears a striking re- semblance to Helena Bonham Carter’s Bel- latrix Lestrange from the “Harry Potter” movies, down to her wild eyes and “Bride of Frankenstein” hair. All that’s missing, seemingly, are Ron
and Hermione. Not that “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is
completely without its own late adolescent angst. There are frequent breaks in the ac- tion — which, truth be told, is none too shabby — to follow a subplot involving Dave’s awkward attempts to court his
blonde college classmate (Teresa Palmer). During those scenes, in which Baruchel re- cycles the stammering-nerd routine he perfected in “She’s Out of My League,” the movie loses all momentum. It takes every ounce of magic Balthazar can muster to get it back.
And speaking of Balthazar, Cage doesn’t disappoint. He’s just manic enough to keep the character from becoming predictable. More’s the pity, then, that he has to cede so much screen time to his character’s young protege. With his irritatingly nasal
voice and yet another twitchily mannered performance, Baruchel will remain, for many, an acquired taste. The movie’s tag line is “It’s the coolest job ever,” but I sus- pect it’ll take more than this “Apprentice”- ship to learn to love its star.
osullivanm@washpost.com
PG. At area theaters. Contains fantasy action violence, mildly crude language and brief bathroom humor. 109 minutes.
B½
STONEWALL UPRISING
A tedious march to a milestone
by Dan Kois For a movie about a groundbreaking
gay rebellion, “Stonewall Uprising” plays it much too straight. That’s not to say that this documentary,
directed by Kate Davis and David Heil- broner, doesn’t tell a story worth telling. The battle between New York City gays and lesbians and the NYPD in the summer of 1969 — sparked by the June 28 police raid on the Stonewall Inn in the West Vil- lage — marked the birth of the modern gay rights movement. But oh, if only it weren’t so “American Experience”-y! That is to say, “Stonewall Uprising” is another in that august line of
thoughtful, well-meaning PBS documen- taries, and it follows a tedious narrative path, familiar to anyone who has been en- lightened if not quite inspired by “Amer- ican Experience” in the past. Historical context, archival image, talking head; lather, rinse, repeat. The historical context, in this case de- tails of just how terrible gay life was in America pre-Stonewall, is unsurprising. America was as square as can be in those days; file footage of suburban dads mow- ing lawns doesn’t really add that much. And even in New York, gay life carried risks; police raided mafia-run gay bars, dressing in drag was illegal, any arrest brought public disgrace. And no one ever fought back. To be gay in the 1960s, even in New York, was to be acquiescent and terrified. The night of the riots must have been a sight to see. So it’s a near-fatal blow to “Stonewall Uprising” that there basically are no sights to see. That’s not entirely the filmmakers’ fault. Were the police to shut down a bar in the West Village tonight,
Flickr and YouTube would overflow with photo and video evidence in minutes. But the initial Stonewall raid and riot went al- most largely undocumented, and the movie opens with a cautionary note: “Other images in this film are either re- creations or drawn from events of the time.”
So instead of Stonewall-specific film or photos, we get file footage of 1960s-era gay New Yorkers in some bar, somewhere. Or maybe they’re actors pretending to be from the 1960s. Who can tell? Not the viewer, since very little of the footage is identified. The constant visual uncertain- ty casts a cloud over the documentary, es- pecially when the same video snippets are used multiple times to illustrate different nights of upheaval and unrest. Much more effective are the men and women who were there. Although their testimony may not lift “Stonewall Upris- ing” above its TV-doc roots, they are elo- quent and frequently passionate. Fasci- natingly, the directors include an inter- view with Seymour Pine, the morals
officer who led the charge into the Stone- wall; now retired, he has wide, sorrowful eyes under his NYPD cap. Hearing his de- scription of being trapped inside the bar as a crowd of a thousand or more howled outside makes you feel for him, even as “Stonewall Uprising” makes you under- stand perfectly how years of systematic oppression led to a community’s liberat- ing rage. (“It must have been terrifying for them,” one interviewee says of those cops. “I hope it was.”) For Stonewall, at its core, was the mo- ment when gays and lesbians stopped ac- cepting institutional abuse and started fighting back. “The police ran from us, the lowliest of the low,” one man recalls, his eyes shining with the memory of a night 41 years ago. “And it was fantastic.”
weekend@washpost.com
Kois is a freelance reviewer.
Unrated. At Landmark’s E Street Cinema. Contains nothing objectionable. 80 minutes.
BB
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