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I was out sick from work a couple days last week and totally forgot about blogging. I think Facebook is usurping my blog thoughts, which is why I post less frequently now. It's so much easier to share a quick thought than to sit down and focus on a post. I'm going to have to think about how to force myself to share more on here. I shall start with a post about Nic Cage's most recent flick!

I went to see this at the cheap theater with E from work, who is one of my new movie buds. I like her, especially because when I cried that nobody wanted to go see crazy Nic's latest with me, she was game in a heartbeat.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice introduces us to Dave as a young boy. He's on a field trip with his class and is flirting with a girl named Becky. He sends her a note that asks her to check a box indicating whether or not she's interested in being his boyfriend. She passes the note back toward him, but a series of events takes the note and Dave on a little detour. He ends up a few blocks away in an a curiosity shop of sorts, in the company of Balthazar (Cage), who seems to know him. Balthazar steps away and tells Dave not to touch anything, which of course means he's going to touch something - a nesting doll that contained Bathazar's arch-nemesis, Maxim (Alfred Molina). The two men battle in front of Dave and end up trapped in a magical urn for ten years.

When they come out, Dave is a science nerd in college (Jay Baruchel), and his life is turned upside-down by Balthazar's claims that Dave is prophesied to be the the next Sorcerer's Apprentice and that he needs to help stop Maxim from unleashing a terrible force on the Earth. I actually really liked these early segments, of Dave as a boy and as he is introduced to Balthazar and Maxim's world of tricks. It's kind of like Harry Potter's first introduction to the wizarding world. There are some impressive sights, like Balthazar's giant mechanical bird and a scene in a festival where a Chinese dragon comes to life.

I liked the scientific emphasis in the story. The actual art of magic is explained as creating vibrations and reactions in matter. I thought it was a nice little spin and could even see some of that working as a good book for kids that could sneakily teach them some scientific principles. And Dave is researching Tesla coils too; as he pursues Becky (Teresa Palmer), who loves music, there's a scene where he's able to make music with the charges from the coils. It's a little bit cheesy, but I thought it was kind of a cool idea.

What was surprising to me about the movie was that it wasn't half as cheesy as I expected it to be. I thought everything was going to be over-the-top and probably a bit campy. It was a lot more subdued than I thought it would be, including Cage's performance. Both he and Molina carried the movie along at a sort of believable level - if they had taken it further, I think the movie would have derailed.

The movie's ending isn't as interesting as its beginning, and the final scenes are underwhelming in comparison. Despite this anticlimactic feeling, I felt the rest of the spectacle was enough to make this an entertaining family movie. Color me surprised.