Seventh Son is the Chicken McNugget of movies. You know there are better options out there when it comes to your chicken-eating selections, but something about the greasy simplicity and drive thru nature of the McNugget calls to you. Before you take a bite you know what you’re going to get and to hide the actual taste of the nugget you drench it in a dipping sauce. As your teeth crack the crisp (if it just came out of the frier) outer shell and squish through the processed meat inside, your mouth is covered with a viscous layer of… something, preventing the taste from leaving your mouth long after you’ve swallowed. In an effort to fix this you take another bite, this time dipped in even more sauce, but the result is the same.
The McNugget is a mirage. It isn’t chicken and no amount of sauce is going to change the fact it doesn’t taste very good. For the moment your hunger is sated, but minutes later it’s almost as if you didn’t even eat. The experience was a waste, as was the money, but you only have yourself to blame. You knew what you were getting yourself into. You paid the money and you paid the price. Walking into Seventh Son the situation is no different and no amount of visual effects sauce is going to turn this studio processed movie into a satisfying feature film. You’ll walk out satisfied only in knowing you got what you expected, but in the end you’ll realize it was nothing but bad for you.
Based on Joseph Delaney‘s series of young adult novels, Seventh Son is an effects driven film you’ve seen countless times before. The story begins as we’re introduced to a “spook” named Master Gregory, played by Jeff Bridges as something of a Gandalf character by way of Bridges’ performance of Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. His words are largely unintelligible, but you gather pieces and fragments here and there. I suspect it was a choice Bridges made seeing how far director Sergey Bodrov would allow him to take it. Too far is the answer.
Spooks, as it turns out, hunt creatures of the dark, but Gregory’s prime targets are witches and in this case the most powerful witch of them all, Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), a witch with whom Gregory has a past (don’t they always?). In order to fight his battles Gregory carries on recruiting the seventh son of seventh sons… Why? I assume because that’s the title of the movie, but it’s not really worth getting worked up over. After his last apprentice (Kit Harrington) gets a little too hot under the collar he searches out for a new one, sending him to Tom Ward (Ben Barnes), a seventh son and so much more.
With Mother Malkin recently escaping the hole Gregory locked her in several years ago thanks to powers gained by the blood moon (isn’t that always the way), Gregory and Thomas must now seek her out and destroy her as she gathers an army of darkness, hellbent on killing a bunch of people. Add in a young witch love interest (Alicia Vikander) for Thomas and you pretty much have your movie.
Aside from Bridges’ providing momentary bits of humor as you try to understand what he’s saying or as he squeals while floating in a river, this is nothing but safe, by-the-numbers movie making — no character development, a half-hearted story and the ending you expect — and perhaps that’s just what you’re looking for. You can almost close your eyes and imagine what’s going to happen next and while my screening was in IMAX 3D, I often found myself removing my glasses and resting for a bit. A reprieve from the feeling of cinematic obesity. After all, if there isn’t a big CG dragon on screen at the moment what use is there in watching? It would be like ordering my McNuggets without a large chocolate shake as my “drink”.
Julianne Moore does little to nothing outside of threatening a few folks and twiddling her long fingernails in the air and the rest of the cast plays their roles just as dutifully, staying within the lines, managing to not rock the boat in the least. In this sense Seventh Son feels like a movie that could come straight out of a factory. Movies For You, tagline: Just outline the movie you want and we’ll deliver it in 24 hours or it’s free. Unfortunately for the film’s production company, Legendary, this one took a lot longer to make it to the big screen after court dealings when it came to finishing the visual effects and a change in distributor once they moved from Warner Bros. to Universal.
Now saddled with a dud, Universal is going to have to figure out how to package their cinematic McNugget. I can only imagine the TV spots after opening weekend, loaded with comments from random Twitter users and at the end of the spot a brief, dun, dah, dun, dun, dun… I’m Lovin’ It… It’s not as if Universal hasn’t gone that route before.
