Seventh Son

It’s unclear whether the soporific dialogue and plotting is due to the source material—a young-adult novel—but the unimaginative scripting and direction sure as hell don’t keep one from developing a certain fascination with the passage of time. The eponymous seventh son (of a seventh son) is a medieval farm boy (Ben Barnes) afflicted by visions, which ultimately never serve a function in the narrative. He’s dragooned into an apprenticeship with the witch-huntin’ Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges) to help him take down the queen witch Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore) with whom he has serious long-standing issues. There’s also a bland ingénue witch to fulfill the obligatory romance needs and buckets of pixel dust to distract from the narrative gaps. It all unfolds in a very rudimentary way that might impress easily amused 13-year-olds, as a dungeon master’s second-string bestiary (ghasts and ogres and dragons, oh my) are trotted out to be dispatched by our intrepid posse. But the rest of us will just be bored to living death waiting for amusement that never comes. Cinemark 14. Rated PG-13