Nicolas Cage isn't magical in 'Sorcerer'

The tale of the sorcerer's apprentice dates back earlier than the famous Mickey Mouse segment in Walt Disney's "Fantasia" (1940), earlier than the 1897 composition that inspired that segment, possibly even earlier than the poem by Goethe that inspired the music.

It's a fable whose moral has remained intact for centuries - until it was made into the feature-length film that arrives in theaters today.

"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" stars Nicolas Cage as Balthazar Blake, who, since the days of Merlin, has been searching for the one magician born with the power to kill the evil Morgana le Fay. Blake finally finds him in geeky Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel, semi-appealing), a physics wiz at New York University. But close behind is Blake's old nemesis, Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina, enjoyable as ever).

The film acknowledges its origins when wizard-in-training Dave uses magic to clean up his physics lab: Cue the marching broomsticks, who trample Dave as easily as they did Mickey. After Blake appears and returns everything to normal, he delivers this stern message: "No shortcuts!"

That is the ancient moral of this story, but Cage seems to have missed it. Not for the first time, he's hoping his own weird magic will save him the hard work of acting. As a result, Blake feels less like a character and more like, well, Nicolas Cage.

With the stunt casting gone flat, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" can only fall back on the usual special effects and a standard fantasy-adventure script. There are moments of charm, but not enough to cast a spell.