Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (Fox 2000)
A Silly Substitute For Harry Fans
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief has Hollywood hoping it will be a new film franchise for the Harry Potter fans. The story is based on a book by Rick Riordan and it probably made a better book than it does a movie. The new trio of junior league adventurers featured in this story just isnt in the same league as Harry Potter.
The film focuses on Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), a high school student who has dyslexia. He lives with his mother Sally (Catherine Keener) and stepfather Gabe (Joe Patagliano). He is not a happy kid. His best friend is Grover (Brandon Jackson) and they are almost inseparable.
One day Percy and his class are on a tour of a museum when he is attacked by a gargoyle looking creature. Within a short period Percy learns his father is Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) and Grover is a satyr. He also learns his favorite teacher (Pierce Brosnan) is a centaur.
Percy is whisked away to a camp for children of the gods. He enters training and then is charged with finding the person or persons who stole Zeus (Sean Bean) lightning bolt, He, Grover, and a girl named Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) team up for this task. Annabeth is the daughter of Athena (Melina Kanakaredes).
The rest of the film deals with the trios adventures and is a big yawn, but at least it isnt as silly as this first portion. Seeing Pierce Brosnan tromping around as a half man half horse creature is just laughable. And poor Grover, he has to run around on donkey legs.
Harry Potter took a little time to grow on me but he, Hermione and Ron were never this boring. Percy, Grover and Annabeth are just characters stuck in a fanciful story that never piques the audiences attention. When you add in the Olympian gods and goddesses it becomes even less interesting because these characters are also lacking in any traits which would draw you to them.
The acting is uniformly bad but poor Catherine Keener fares the worst. This is a woman who can make any character she plays interesting, at least that has always been the case in the past. As Sally she has met her Waterloo. She just cant find anything to do but stand around looking trapped.
Then there is Uma Thurman. She plays Medusa and has to have a collection of snakes for hair. She too seems awkward in her role and hopefully didnt sign up for a sequel. McKidd gets to play Poseidon as a giant god and then when he waters himself down is in human size. Either way he is totally forgettable in the role.
The film is rated PG-13 for mild profanity and violence.
The film just doesnt have any spark to it. Based on the popularity of Riordans books there should be a good initial turnout for the film, but word of mouth should shut Percy down for further adventures.
I scored Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief an its Greek to me 4 out of 10.
