Make this live action? What can miss?
I’m not sure what to think of Nicholas Cage. He’ll put out a fairly average family-adventure movie (National Treasure) that my wife and I can watch in the same room without groaning at the others choice. Then he’ll crank out a few steaming piles of shit (Wicker Man, Bangkok Dangerous) that make me all but give up on him. Then when I’m not looking, he’ll drop a monster of a performance on me (Kick Ass) and make me worship him yet again. I swear I need Lithium when I go to his films because he causes me to act bipolar.
Thank you Jon Turteltaub for making me believe again. Thank you for bringing back a Nicholas that my wife and I can enjoy together. Thank you for taking a musical cartoon about a lazy mouse with a penchant for fucking with janitorial tools and crafting a movie that I would be willing to pay to see again.
That said, Nic Cage delivers an excellent performance as Balthazar Blake, a student of Merlin and seeker of the apprentice. (For the record, I’m very glad they changed the name from Yensid to Balthazar, because all I’d hear is Disney backwards every time they’d have said his name otherwise.) Due to a betrayal by Maxim Horvath (an excellently named villain played by Alfred Molina), Merlin is murdered and Balthazar’s love interest is trapped until the ultimate evil Morgana (Silent Hill’s Alice Krige) is destroyed by the last Merlinian. Thus the quest through time to find the one that can save his love, destroy all that is evil and free him from his quest.
The Original Yensid. I don't think Cage could've pulled off the beard.
The casting director for this movie more than did their job. Every role is perfectly filled by the actor (or actress if your really getting PC on me) that played it. For those of you who’ve witnessed the glorious film that is Rock n’ Rolla, you’ve already been introduced to (Toby Kebbell). As the counterpart to our protagonist, he shines in his ignorance, general menace, and hilarious vanity.
The special effects were great and never once pulled me out of the movie. The one fault I have for this film is one of personal taste. It’s something I call the “Ghostrider Effect”. In that movie, Ghostrider was going to have to battle multiple enemies that were made to look very malicious and evil. The battle against them, turned out to be quick and underwhelming. Unfortunately, that happened in this Cage vehicle as well. It really doesn’t take away from the movie, but it annoyed me anyway. I found them to be more of a plot device than actual characters.
All that being said, I’d recommend this movie to anyone. It’s a fun pop-corn movie that had a similar fun feel that the original Pirates of the Caribbean did when I first saw that. If you want to relax, enjoy some over-priced popcorn and watch wizards battle it out in modern day New York, this is your movie. I give it 4/5 ships.
Written by Farva
