by: Peter Travers 
 
 Remember that scene in Disney’s animated Fantasia when Mickey Mouse, as an apprentice to the sorcerer Yen Sid (that’s Disney spelled backward), stole his master’s hat and made brooms dance? That scene is a classic. Now producer Jerry Bruckheimer has fashioned a live-action epic around that moment with Nicolas Cage as the wizard and Jay Baruchel as the apprentice. 
 
 Peter Travers reviews The Sorcerer's Apprentice in his weekly video series, "At the Movies With Peter Travers." 
 
 It would be a gross understatement to note that something is lost in translation. Everything is lost – style, substance, wit, character, logic. I could go on. Cage and Baruchel work hard to stay accessible, but the computer-generated effects come on like heavy artillery blowing away any hint of flesh and blood. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice should be rated U for Untouched by Human Hands. 
 
 Peter Travers picks the season's can't-miss films and the ones with a bad vibe in his summer movie preview. 
 
 ||||| Enlarge By Robert Zuckerman, Disney Enterprises Spellbound by the potential: Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) finds a young boy (Jake Cherry) with untrained powers to take under his wing. ABOUT THE MOVIE ABOUT THE MOVIE The Sorcerer's Apprentice 
 
 * 1/2 (out of four) 
 
 Stars: Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Monica Bellucci 
 
 Director: Jon Turteltaub 
 
 Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures 
 
 Rating: PG for fantasy action violence, some mild rude humor and brief violence 
 
 Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes 
 
 Opens Wednesday nationwide The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the opposite of alchemy. The movie is a clunky, noisy contraption. Director Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure) piles on gadgets and devices in the hopes we'll be dazzled enough to miss the story's lack of coherence and charm. The disjointed plot is a mélange of clichés with logic that feels conjured up on the spot. Magical legends are cobbled together as if by someone in Screenwriting 101. Or, as is the case here, by a half dozen writers, seemingly at cross purposes. VIDEO: Watch the trailer The story is not remotely fun or magical, even in its interpretation of the iconic Fantasia scene in which brooms and mops clean solo, multiplying and intensifying as they go. The prologue gives us a centuries-old glimpse of master sorcerer Merlin (James A. Stephens) battling mega-evil Morgana Le Fay (Alice Krige). Before he expires, Merlin scrunches Morgana's malicious essence into a nesting doll, where she is doomed to remain until a magician potent enough can release her wicked powers. Cut to 2000 and an awkward 10-year-old boy named Dave (Jake Cherry), whose schoolboy existence is dominated by his infatuation with classmate Becky (Peyton List). Through a series of events, he becomes embroiled in Merlin's legacy. The overblown effects feel bombastic rather than spellbinding. The movie trots out a slew of familiar car chases and explosions from producer Jerry Bruckheimer's overused arsenal, but it does add something new to the mix — the clunky and nonsensical phrase "prime Merlinian" is uttered a couple of dozen times. The rest of the wizardly back story is similarly ridiculous. The film comes courtesy of the unholy trinity responsible for the National Treasure movies: Bruckheimer, Turteltaub and star Nicolas Cage. Cage plays Balthazar, Merlin's protégé and Dave's magical mentor. His arch-nemesis, Horvath (Alfred Molina), and lady love, Veronica (Monica Bellucci), come and go amid gravity-defying fireballs. Balthazar meets his budding wizard apprentice when he's a moony, bumbling boy and predicts he'll be a great wizard someday. Young Dave grows into an even more gawky and besotted man, played by Jay Baruchel. His character is so one-note — and that note is so discordant — that Dave comes off more like a collection of irritating mannerisms and tics than a believable human being. In Knocked Up (2007) and Tropic Thunder (2008), Baruchel made a distinct impression, coming off a bit morose, plenty goofy and inherently likable. But here, his whiny voice grates, as does Cage's posturing. Cage stalks around in a long leather duster, grandstanding for his protégé, trailing messy curls and looking more wannabe Goth rocker than magic man. Brainiac Dave, a student at NYU, gains confidence with the grown-up Becky (Teresa Palmer) when he learns he's imbued with special powers. Becky is helpless to resist his nasally charms. Apparently, when it comes to romance, geekery is offset by being the Prime Merlinian. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more ||||| The Sorcerer's Apprentice 
 
 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' review: Nicolas Cage's excess guides overstuffed but imaginative fantasy 
 
 Genser/AP Nicolas Cage and Alfred Molina star in 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice,' which was filmed around New York. 
 
 Ah, now it's clear why Nicolas Cage has chosen increasingly out-there roles the last few years. With "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" - a frenetic, overstuffed but imaginative fantasy, especially for kids wishing a magic spell could get them out of high school - all is at last revealed: Cage is the world's most successful teenage boy. 
 
 As the Oscar-winning actor has let his id out in recent movies, it's been successful for him (the hit "National Treasure" movies, the recent redo of "Bad Lieutenant") and even better for fans of bad movies ("Ghost Rider," "Knowing," "Kick-Ass"). Cage wanted to play an Indiana Jones-like adventurer, a Marvel Comics superhero with a flaming skull, a Batman-ish vigilante and, now, a wizard. So he did, damn the consequences. 
 
 Like any William Shatner appearance, a Cage performance is a thing unto itself. And "Apprentice's" everything-plus-the-kitchen sink approach lets its star's excesses guide it. The irony is that Cage actually underplays for much of the movie, but really, that's the way to go when one is throwing energy orbs, riding atop the Chrysler Building's eagle ornaments and dealing with enough plot to choke Houdini. 
 
 Cage plays Balthazar Blake, who was a student of Merlin in 740 A.D. Blake was in love with another interning wizard, Veronica (Monica Bellucci), though they're betrayed by the nasty Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina). Through several leaps of narrative gymnastics, Veronica ends up possessed by Merlin's nemesis Morgana, and, along with Horvath, becomes imprisoned in a nesting doll for centuries. 
 
 Blake can't free his love or defeat Morgana until he finds "The Prime Merlinian," a descendant of the Arthurian conjurer. After centuries of searching, he finds him in - yup, Tribeca - where 10-year-old Dave Stutler happens upon Blake's magic store and attracts a supernatural ring before accidentally freeing Horvath. 
 
 But wait, that's not all! Additional spells (and plot) trap Blake and Horvath in an urn for 10 years. When they're finally freed, Dave (Jay Baruchel), now a nerdy NYU science student, is Blake's only hope if he's to stop Horvath's plan to release Morgana, raise the souls of evil dead sorcerers ("Morganians") and destroy the world. 
 
 If nearly every sentence in that plot recap sounds like it should be delivered at breakneck pace by a guy in a long cape, that's because Cage's "National Treasure" director Jon Turteltaub planned it that way. It gets exhausting, and much of the dark New York-at-night visuals don't let us appreciate the spur-of-the-moment spells Blake and Horvath hurl at each other. 
 
 What should have been a fizzy Disney brand-enhancer like "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Enchanted" seems like "The Haunted Mansion." A scene that references the dancing-mop sequence in 1940's "Fantasia," from which this movie gets its title, is a throwaway, like most of the special effects. 
 
 Except ... you never know when someone's got a rabbit in their hat, and Cage's pointy fedora turns out to house a few surprises. He and Baruchel ("She's Out of My League") make a good team - odd and odder - each of them muttering nasally through clenched jaws. 
 
 Molina doesn't do much, but if a villain with a walking stick and bowler hat is your idea of evil, he's your man (and Toby Kebell, as Horvath's Criss Angel-like flunky, is goofy fun). The hocus-pocus they pull is plentiful if not prize-winning. And New York really is a character - not quite as in "Ghostbusters," but that's what they were aiming at. 
 
 That there are more misses than hits will matter only if you're above the legal age to drive. Sorcery, Balthazar explains to Dave, is part magic, part science. And, Nicolas Cage might add, part not caring what the grownups say. 
 
 jneumaier@nydailynews.com
– Nobody is cheering for this Jerry Bruckheimer-produced pretender to the Potter throne, based (sort of) on the iconic scene from Fantasia. Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel play a sorcerer and his protege on a mission to ... do something—anything!—involving lots of spells and special effects. The result is anything but magical, critics say: A.O. Scott, the New York Times: The Apprentice is "loud, mechanical and uninspired." Cage and Baruchel "supply a measure of well-compensated eccentricity," but "their labors ultimately serve to emphasize the grinding mediocrity of the enterprise." Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: "The computer-generated effects come on like heavy artillery blowing away any hint of flesh and blood." The film ought to be "rated U for Untouched by Human Hands." Joe Neumaier, NY Daily News: The Sorcerer's Apprentice is "overstuffed" but "imaginative." The fact that "there are more misses than hits," he writes, "will matter only if you're above the legal age to drive." Claudia Puig, USA Today: The plot is "disjointed," the story "not remotely fun or magical." This attempt at movie magic, she quips, is "the opposite of alchemy."