THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE (2001)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

The tag-line for this SORCERER'S APPRENTICE claims it's "one great adventure." But not only is the movie not "great," it doesn't fit the category of adventure at all, but that of the drama. The script plays down all the Arthurian elements of the story-- young contemporary 14-year-old Ben Clark (Byron Taylor) gets drawn into a conflict between the incredibly long-lived Merlin (Robert Davi) and his equally blessed opponent Morgana Le Fay (Kelly Le Brock). In place of high adventure, writer Brett Morris-- until recently, his only such credit-- dilates upon various routines about Ben's relations to his family and his peers at school.

Ben's proximate difficulty is that his father gets a better job that forces the family to move from South Africa (where most of the film was shot by an English crew) to England. Ben resents this heartily, as would any 14-year-old, but he also complains of a lack of attention from his father, who's perhaps a little too buried in his job as a museum curator. 

Accordingly, while trying to adjust to his new school-- where he almost immediately picks up both a possible girlfriend and a bully-- Ben goes looking for another father figure. He approaches a neighbor named Milner (spell it sideways), demonstrating a trick of stage magic, but the older man rejects the young one's attention. Then later, Milner seems to want to make friends after all, and gradually Ben learns that Milner knows real magic, and so Ben wants to become this sorcerer's apprentice.

Apparently synchronicity is responsible for Milner living in the same city to which Ben transfers, because this sub rosa sorcerer is busy protecting both "the staff of Fingal" and some sort of magic crystal from his enemies. Morgana is of course after both items, but she doesn't have much in the way of resources: just two thugs who are actually a transformed cat and rat. (The writer fails to generate any comedy from these two traditionally-inimical animal types.)

So the film trundles along, focusing mostly on Ben's challenges at school and his attempts to learn magic from Milner. The motivations of Milner/Merlin are always vague. Does he believe that Ben is a danger to his protection of the magical doohickies, or does Ben represent some way to defeat Morgana? If the two magi were struggling over gaining the youth's help because Ben inherited some ability to wield the staff from some distant English ancestor, the story would have made a little more sense. But the stakes in the conflict between the two sorcerers are never clear.

The climax more or less attempts to bring these elements together. Ben seeks out his real father and tries to reach out to him, though he's not able to enunciate his problem. Then the father gets time-frozen while Merlin confronts Morgana. The two posture a little, and Merlin defeats Morgana with one quick spell. Does the ease of her defeat have something to do with Ben's decision to side with Merlin? Who knows? Afterward, the so-called apprentice loses all interest in real magic and settles down to his high-school universe.

Most "Arthurian adventures in modern times" have been underwhelming in terms of Matters Arthurian, and APPRENTICE is no exception. But the dramatic arc, the script's main focus, is even weaker than all the magical conflicts. The most positive thing I can say for the film is that director David Lister keeps the simplistic story rolling along without becoming visually tedious. One of Lister's last credited films, the 2010 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, showed that he could do even better with a script that didn't vacillate about its main point.