THE fantasy hero of “The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising” seeks a magnificent, other worldly, elusive prize: one-tenth of Harry Potter’s audience.
In today’s England, a teenage boy is instructed by grown-up mentors in the use of magical powers while a dark lord who comes in many formats promises an epic battle. The movie is based on a 1973 book by Susan Cooper, who must be trembling in fear of being sued for ripping off J.K. Rowling’s ideas and publishing them 20 years in advance.
A kid unversed in other name-brand fantasy movies might go for “The Seeker,” but in 2007 it’s redundant, a puttering Potter without wit and whimsy. Good and evil don’t seem to be trying to destroy each other so much as come up with cool-looking effects to show off, as if they were competing in a “Project Runway” for wizards. When the evil Rider, the lord of the Dark, is trying to menace the good guys by making it rain on them, why does he turn himself into 1,000 crows, who then turn back into . . . more water?
The pubescent hero, Will (Alexander Ludwig), buys his sister a mysterious trinket on his 14th birthday but is accosted by sinister security guards who want the bauble, then turn into crows before our very eyes. Unexpected, sure. But then they do what the Dark forces do throughout this movie: make some noise and wait for Will to escape.
Will finds that the friendly local eccentrics (Ian McShane, Frances Conroy) are really mythic warrior-teachers sent to help Will discover his true identity as the Seeker who must leapfrog across time to gather six amulets, or Signs. These collectibles will enable Will to defeat the increasingly powerful Rider from the Dark, who has big plans to envelop the planet with a thick plume of noxious smog. Sounds nasty, but on the plus side it might mean an end to a cappella singing groups.
Given superpowers, Will does approximately nothing with them (he can command fire, but uses it mainly to throw cool supertantrums). He’s as passive as a dead mackerel when it comes to journeying through time to round up the Signs. He’ll just be standing around looking at a cloud when, bam, he’s in a 13th-century pub amid grog-swilling wenches, and the next amulet is sitting there in front of him.
Meanwhile, the Rider from the Dark futzes around with low-impact threats to the kid’s family by, for instance, making it rain easily dodged icicles in their living room. The Rider also sends spies to fool Will into giving up the Signs, leading to trickery like this exchange: “Give them to me!” “No!” The last time I saw a rider this stupid was in “Wild Hogs.”
Running time: 94 minutes. Rated PG (mildly scary fantasy battles). At the 84th Street, the 34th Street, the Union Square, others.