Review 264: Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

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Hello, I'm the Anonymous Critic, I watch it so you don't have to.
O.K. I'm just gonna level with you. I really flipping hate this movie. A lot. Not because the movie itself sucks, although it DOES! But because it's a film based on a young adult fantasy book series I really like-Percy Jackson & the Olympians by Rick Riordan.

Just thinking about this movie makes me cringe. It makes me angry to my boiling point. Everything about it is horrible. The way the books plot is written is horrible, the directing's horrible, the acting's horrible; I'd rather watch a bad Adam Sandler comedy than watch this god-awful shoot-storm of cinematic junk!

But why moan about it when I can properly torture you by reviewing it?

It's the 21st century, but the gods of Mount Olympus and assorted monsters have walked out of the pages of high school student Percy Jackson's (Logan Lerman) Greek mythology texts and into his life. And they're not happy: Zeus's lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect. Even more troubling is the sudden disappearance of Percy's mother. As Percy finds himself caught between angry and battling gods, he and his friends embark on a cross-country adventure to catch the true lightning thief, save Percy's mom (Catherine Keener), and unravel a mystery more powerful than the gods themselves.

Look... umm, umm, ... This movie sucks, really really sucks. The whole thing could have been awesome but theres too much idiosy, the film won't take itself seriously and everything seems to revolve around Percy's aimless, clueless journey to find Zeus's lightning bolt.
 I cannot believe how badly this pictures written, they've taken a series that had such great potential to be something awesome and they've turned it into nothing more than a Harry Potter rip-off. They've made numerous changes to the book so theres no Clarisse, theres no Oracle. As a result. Theres no depth, theres no character development. The entire film plays out like a hypercinetic action picture, the moment Percy learns that his moms being held captive by Hades, he leaves with Annabeth and Grover without prepearing or planning ahead. All this comes out of nowhere no build-up at all.

Director Chris Columbus' direction is clueless and hypercinetic (he was only hired because he directed the first two Harry Potter pictures). the cinematography is hideous and is not up to cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt's usual standard, the special effects are just o.k., the score by Christophe Beck is gunk, the costumes are atrocious, the production design is cheap (the whole looks cheap and filthy. It doesn't have the epic look you'd come to expect from a historical epic). The make up is cheesy, the action scenes are uninspired, unexciting and lack tension, the editing feels rushed, giving the film a hypercinetic pace and the ending was terrible.

The acting is mostly passable to awful. In fact I'm gonna cut straight to the chase and say as Percy Jackson, Logan Lerman's pretty bland and look board and lost at the same time. He's got Daniel Radcliffe's role but none of Daniel Radcliffe's charisma or stature. 

Alexandra Daddario's o.k. but not great as Annabeth

 Brandon T. Jackson is super irrateing as Grover, he doesn't have the ernesty, or the humilty of a guardian or a friend a just across a s more Jar Jar Binks than anything else.

I'm just gonna wrap this review up here by saying, Pierce Brosnan and Uma Thurman are good as Chiron and Medusa respectively but their roles are limited. Catherine Keener is wasted as Percy's mom and the rest of the cast is just filler.

Need I say more.

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The Anonymous Critic