There's a bit in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," Disney's shameless attempt to siphon off some of that "Harry Potter" cash flow, where a wizard played by Nicholas Cage is lecturing his young protege on how to conjure magic. The trick to sorcery, says Cage, is to tap all one's mental faculties; most people, he explains, "use only 10 percent of their brains."
That's the most candid admission I've ever heard in a Hollywood flick regarding what the filmmakers think of their audience. "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is nothing if not a movie for people who use only 10 percent of their brains, and that is probably 9 percent more than you need. Indeed, the ideal audience here would be people who are flatlining on an electroencephalogram.
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice," like so many other Hollywood productions these days, is a fragment of an idea stretched out to two hours. After turning a Disney theme park ride into a cinematic franchise with "Pirates of the Caribbean," producer Jerry Bruckheimer — God's modern one-man plague on a sinful planet — takes a beloved and artfully orchestrated Mickey Mouse cartoon from the animated classic "Fantasia" and — presto! — turns it into another loud, generic, SFX-driven fantasy extravaganza.