Movie Review: SEVENTH SON

[youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmgMjiV9awM”]

Before I review Seventh Son, I have to first review the theater itself first to properly get you into my head-space. My cousin Dan was my plus one, we were seated in the second to last row. The screening was half empty. Usually these screenings are packed to the gills no matter what movie it is, but I could have brought a couple extra friends and nobody would have noticed. Now, when I usually attend these kinds of screenings there are people from the studio at the front making sure I’m part of the press and checking for cell phones to make sure nothing leaks. Not this time. I was greeted by a guy who simply said “Seventh Son?” and I replied “Yeah” and that was the end of our conversation. I just walked right in. Right off the bat I got the feeling that nobody really gave a shit about this movie or if it leaked or not. The people sitting in my row (who were clearly not a part of the press) were talking about toe-nail fungus and how magicians get laid more than regular people.Their two minute conversation about wizard sex was better than all of the dialogue in this movie.

In the first few scenes we have Master Gregory imprisoning a witch in a mountain, then a time lapse, and then the witch escapes because it’s the “blood moon” establishing early on that the rules in this world are pretty arbitrary. The witch who goes by “Mother Malkin” returns to seek revenge on Gregory and kills his apprentice, played by an expendable Kit Harrington. Master Gregory then makes a trip to the Ward family because Thomas Ward, a “seventh son of a seventh son” lives there, and he wishes to make him his new apprentice. Now, in common mythology, the seventh son of a seventh son is believed to have magical powers or strength (or if you’re in Latin America, a Werewolf!) but it’s never really brought up in the movie. It seems that Master Gregory just wants a seventh son as his apprentice because it sounds cool. It would make sense if they introduced some kind of prophecy like “The seventh son of a seventh son will be the one to kill the witch!” but they don’t. They don’t even really give him any magic powers. It just seems like Gregory wants to make Thomas his apprentice because “seventh son of a seventh son” is a cool thing to hear Jeff Bridges say in a goofy medieval accent.

The plot is incredibly simple, Gregory and Thomas make their way to Mother Malkin’s mountain lair, fight monsters, gain experience and find love along the way, no real twists or turns. Ben Barnes as Thomas and Alicia Vikander as the half witch Alice aren’t bad per se, but I haven’t seen forced chemistry like this on screen since the Star Wars prequels. Jeff Bridges is great as always, even in the crappiest of films you can’t accuse him of giving it his all. The same could not be said for Julianne Moore, who was clearly looking at a paycheck being dangled before her eyes behind the camera. I hope she asked for a lot of money when she read lines like “Oh, you brought a boy. I like boys” in the script. That’s a real line spoken by an Academy Award nominated person.

The effects are sub standard and the 3D is painfully bad. You’re better off staying at home watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the hundredth time.

My cousin Dan ranks movies based on how many times he has to look at his watch during the run time, and while he never actually looked at his watch, he said he was tempted a few times but the film did hold his attention and thought the film was alright. But then again, he did really like The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, so what does he know?