It's easy to ignore The Sorcerer's Apprentice because it has the narrative structure of static—the writers expect you to know the hero monomyth so well that plot and character development can fade into white noise behind the shooting of plasma bolts or the riding of a giant metal eagle. Okay, Bruckheimer, I'll bite. But though the movie appears to be a promising Disney mashup of Fantasia and Harry Potter, it's really more of a blizzard of unrelated YouTube-length action sequences held together by Nicolas Cage's monotone one-liners (funny as they are). Attempting to engage with such a thing is... agitating.

After clunking through two start-and-stop opening sequences, we learn that Cage, Merlin's faithful apprentice, has spent thousands of years fighting Merlin's other, less-than-faithful apprentices and trapping their souls in a nesting doll. Physics nerd Dave Stutler (played with shy verve by Jay Baruchel) is conscripted as Merlin's heir—the "Prime Merlinian"—in order to fight Horvath, the magicalest Victorian pimp in NYC. Director Jon Turteltaub then escorts us through a parade of action-adventure set pieces, including a dragon thrashing its way through a confetti storm in Chinatown (why is it always Chinese New Year in Chinatown?) and a Ferrari chase through a mirror-world. And lightning shoots everywhere! Wow! Whoosh-zap-KABLOOSH! "Dave," Cage mono-intones, "you should run."

We also learn that there are a few important rules to magic. So pay close attention, all you would-be sorcerers:

1. Nonwhite people can't do magic, but if they can, they are evil.

2. Boys are better at magic than girls. And girls can't do magic, but if they can, they are evil.

3. Magic is actually science. (Which boys are better at, right?)

We're almost willing to go along with it for a while because—POW! ZAP!—we love magic. We love magic! And all we want is to put on a goddamn cape, shriek faux-Latin incantations at each other in the backyard, and shoot some plasma bolts with Nicolas Cage. Right? Except you, minorities and women. Not you. Not you.