Welcome to movie math where we take a look at a movie and see if it adds up to family fun.  

Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Live Action)

If the goal when you’re forking over the big bucks it costs these days to go to a movie ($40 bucks for 3 people?! What the what the?!) is that your kid comes away happy – then this film fits the bill.

Clearly  hoping to tap into the wizarding frenzy created by the Harry Potter movies as well as to strike the same box office gold they struck by turning their  Pirates of The Caribbean ride into a movie – Disney has based this live-action tale on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment of their classic antimated film Fantasia. Don’t know if that’ll help though, since most people don’t even remember it.  Anyway, aside from a little dancing mop sequence that’s out of the original film, this film’s pretty much its own entity.

It’s a story about NYU physics major DAVE (Jay Baruchel) who has no idea that he is a blood descendant of the wizard Merlin until the day his wizard mentor BALTHAZAR (Nicholas Cage) shows up to give him some lessons. Of course it’s not that straightforward because well, then there wouldn’t be drama and that’s booooring. So enter HORVATH (Alfred Molina) who wants to destroy the human world and in order to do that must release the evil MORGANA from a set of nesting dolls in which she has been trapped since around, oh,  760 AD. Did I mention that the love of Balthazar’s life is also trapped in there? Did I also mention that Horvath thinks Dave knows where the nesting dolls are or that he has a wizard sidekick who uses his magical gifts to sell himself as a CRISS ANGEL type magician? No? Well, none of it really matters anyway. Cuz in the end it’s just an excuse for a lot of wild chases, exploding electricity balls, fiery dragons and action that’s more CGI than mystical or magical. Which is where I should mention that this is a Jerry Bruckheimer film.  Yep. ‘Splains a lot, Lucy.

There’s the requisite  romance subplot which, while not very well developed, does serve to  prove to geeky boys that they can still get the pretty girl if they’re super smart and can force Tesla Rays to make music. So if you’re the mom of a boy who can’t catch a baseball to save his life but can  recreate the Parthenon with Legos, this is a good movie for you…and him.  Obviously for girls too because my 8 year-old daughter not only laughed a lot during the film,  she also pronounced as the credits rolled “I’m going to tell all my friends to see this!”  Click to Buy Tickets Now at Fandango.

MINIMAL STORY + COOL SPECIAL EFFECTS = FAIR SUMMERTIME FARE