Scentless Apprentice

Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) had been searching for the “Prime Merlinian” for 1270 years and in all that time never caught wind of this invention called shampoo. He did however develop a liking for ultra-long rawhide trench coats and other such comic book Goth super-stylings and at some point wisely chose to base himself in New York City, a place where one can go out wearing such flamboyant vestments without drawing too much unwanted attention.

Balthazar was biding time running a grimy midtown antique shop when he first met Dave (Jay Baruchel) back in 2000, but Dave was just a little kid then and not quite ready to assume his duties as savior of the world. Ten years later Dave’s grown into a nerdy genius physics major at NYU, and when Balthazar’s old nemesis Horvath (Alfred Molina) is resurrected from a pillar of roaches Dave’s belated date with destiny finally arrives. He’s taken under Balthazar’s wing, is ordered to wear pointy shoes, and learns how to make molecules vibrate faster and cough up plasma bolts and fireballs, both of which, it should be said, look pretty awesome. Indeed, the fairly seamless parade of luminous special effects in Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is by far the best thing in the movie, whose story is entirely mechanical, formulaic enough that you can take naps and not miss a thing, and whose performances range from pleasant to annoying.

Director John Turteltaub’s been making movies for all ages for ages, among them Cool Runnings, 3 Ninjas, Disney’s The Kid and both National Treasure movies, which I guess is where he became pals with Cage, who repeatedly flings his locks and trench coat but isn’t let off the leash enough here to be very interesting even as pure camp. Canada’s own Baruchel meanwhile delivers hunchy, squirmy, fidgety affectations that seemed fairly purposeful in The Trotsky but here just get distracting and oblivious to the vibe conjured by his collaborators, especially his token love interest (Teresa Palmer). You have to wonder, did they bother to ask Michael Cera?

In any case Turteltaub’s doesn’t give his actors enough space to fully play the comedy, but he keeps things jumping at least, letting our eyes roam all over as, for example, we watch a Chinese dragon careen through Chinatown or a brassy bull bash up Battery Park. Yet for all the expensive location work there isn’t a single scene in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice that actually resembles New York in the slightest. Too bad, since all that hocus-pocus would probably feel more magical if it were unleashed in settings that felt more like real life.

Bruising my religion: Year One shows daring, lacks bite

It’s left ambiguous as to whether the forbidden fruit consumed by portly Paleolithic hunter Zed (Jack Black) near the start of Year One actually bestow its eaters with divine knowledge. But it’s worth noting that after gobbling these honey-dipped orbs, which resemble Christmas tree ornaments and seem to possess hallucinogenic properties, Zed will question his people’s most deeply rooted beliefs, invent applause, and resolve a riot that threatens to topple Sodom. (He’ll also, apparently, travel through time.) Zed’s exile from his brethren may not lead him to found his promised “Muscle Tribe of Danger and Excellence,” but with the aid of his slight young sidekick Oh (Michael Cera), he will be present for a numerous quasi-historical events such as Cain’s slaying of Abel, the ideation of circumcision, and Abraham’s near-slaying of Isaac, the sacrifice prevented not by God’s intervention but Zed’s. It’s no wonder Oh, encouraged by Zed’s precocious doubts, begins questioning the existence of God altogether.

If Year One focused more on Zed and Oh’s pursuit of skepticism and heresy it may have been more satisfying as a narrative while maintaining it’s good natured, amusingly picaresque tone. (Maybe we could have had a smarter, more entertaining and less condescending version of Religulous.) But writer/director Harold Ramis and co-scripters Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg have opted to shuffle almost aimlessly from gag to gag, and few of these gags would work at all were it not for the fun duo of Black and Cera, whose pairing invokes a sort of reverse Quixote and Panza, though neither of them seem to break a sweat here. (Maybe they should have let Black sing something. He's got metal hair and everything.) Whether eating shit, nearly getting sodomized by Sodomites, or getting car sick from riding in a donkey-drawn cart that goes slower than pedestrians, there’s a lot that’s almost funny.

Comedy, especially of the dopier variety, is dependent on timing, and I think if Year One fails to generate the desired number of laughs—the audience I watched it with certainly seemed more sedate than one would expect for such fare—it may also simply come down to basic directorial and editorial choices. Judging from the number of scenes that cut out just as something spectacular is ostensibly about to happen—such as Oh getting rescued by Zed from becoming lunch for snakes or cougars—its possible Ramis, rather than being willfully elliptical, simply lacked coverage. Yet it’s just as likely that the coverage he did get just didn’t serve the scenes. There are numerous dialogue sequences comprised of far too many close-ups, and as Ramis keeps cutting from one to another it seemed to me that something in the comedy was getting lost, or at least severely dissipated in the lack of interplay. But its equally true that the brand of comedy that distinguishes Year One may just be too stale for 2009, a sensibility, replete with casual homophobia, so outdated they actually resorted to putting a blooper reel over the credits, a technique that even Jackie Chan has surely abandoned.

So long as Juno and I know...

Getting unexpectedly pregnant after having sex for the first time with a buddy at the age of 16 is generally sort of a drag, but for the titular hipster heroine of Juno, played with spunky verve by Haligonian wunderkind Ellen Page, it’s not quite the bad deal you might expect. Perhaps its because something about her world just seems a little more fun and cozy than the one the rest of us live in.

No one seems to mind when Juno re-creates a rumpus room on somebody’s front lawn. Her local druggist speaks in alliteration-heavy aphorisms. Her ex-army dad and doggie-crazed step-mom (the appealing pairing of JK Simmons and Alison Janney) don’t even get pissed off when Juno tells them she’s got a bun in the oven. There’s a girl from school protesting against abortion outside the clinic Juno visits, but even she just seems kinda huggable, even informative. Plus, cute little indie rock songs seems to be playing everywhere Juno goes. The film almost makes you want to run out and get pregnant.

Juno was directed by Montreal-born Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking), who has a nice feeling for pace and humour, a catchy way of framing the Vancouver-as-generic-US-city locations, and, it would seem, an easy way with actors. The film has a winsome attitude that’s only slightly soured by Reitman’s excess of eagerness to tear pages from Wes Anderson or even Jared Hess’s baroque scrapbooks, flooding each scene with kitschy costumes and paraphernalia and offbeat pop culture references. There’s even a Kinks song. The approach works well enough for the material, but Reitman’s not going to win any awards for originality.

More curiously, Juno was written by one Diablo Cody. If that name sounds like it belongs to an ex-stripper, you’d be on the right track. If it sounds like it belongs to a pretty clever ex-stripper, you’d be batting a 1000. If anything, Juno values cleverness above all else, giving the verbally able Page a steady stream of one-liners only rarely punctuated by something not deep-fried in irony. With this, her first produced screenplay, Cody seems to trust her cheek more than her heart, but there is ultimately a significant amount of subtext here that helps raise the film up above your average teen movie flotsam.

After deciding, in a commendably non-didactic scene, that abortion just isn’t for her, Juno lands upon an ad in the local Pennysaver posted by Mark and Vanessa (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), a youngish, upper middle-class couple looking for a kid. Juno and her dad pay a visit to the couple’s expansive suburban home and quickly surmises that while her unborn child will probably have to battle against suffocating décor, love and safety are almost ensured. It’s equally clear however that trouble is brewing in this beige carpeted paradise: Mark is stifling an undying love for horror flicks and punk rock, winning points with Juno but displeasing the studiously adult (i.e.: emasculating) Vanessa.

With this crucial element of Mark and Vanessa, Juno begins to reveal the real smarts that underline its sass. The film conveys a decidedly inclusive inclination toward families of all types and in all states. Juno isn’t sure yet quite how she feels about the soft-spoken father of her baby-in-the-making (Superbad’s Michael Cera –yet another Canuck!), but she’s beginning to ask serious questions about the elusive nature of love and the deeper value of trust and support. As the plot thickens, she, and we, can see that love, trust and support can be lost and found in expected places, and one of the real pleasures of Cody’s story lies in the way it doesn’t let any single major character remain a mere type when called upon to make important decisions.

How well anything in the film comes across ultimately comes down to Page’s performance, and, like the film as a whole, it’s a piece of work that, at its best, is characterized by its distinctive way of catching you off guard. Though still only 20 and elfin, Page has been slated as the next big thing for a little while now. The web-dating sicko thriller Hard Candy was meant to be her breakthrough, but she’s far better served by Juno. She has a terrifically breezy way with the dialogue and never forces emotion, even when the script seems to demand it of her. The performance of the year? Not quite. The first major stop on a road to a brilliant career? Very likely.