Friday, August 16, 2013

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters - 2 stars

I don't remember much of the first Percy Jackson movie, but I remember I really disliked it.  This one isn't as bad, but that isn't saying much. 

For some reason the first movie was called Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and this time they decided to drop the 'and the Olympians' from the title.  In this movie, Percy is used to his status as a demigod.  He and his friends live at Camp Half-Blood where they mostly have contests with each other.  A bunch of these demigods live there, and they're all teenagers.  The movie makes no mention of what happens to these kids when they grow up.  Do they just go live in the real world and try to blend in with humans?  Why are there so many demigods?  Do the gods hook up with mortal women that often? 

Sorry, but this movie leaves a lot of questions unanswered.  The protective force field is destroyed by a gigantic robotic bull, and the kids go on a quest to recover the Golden Fleece, which is the only thing that can repair the force field.  The force field is generated by some tree that used to be a demigod before she was killed, so this tree has to be saved to repair the force field.  Whatever.

The acting isn't very good, and it just felt like this movie really wanted to be Harry Potter.  Attention movie studio executives:  not every young adult fantasy series is as good as Harry Potter.  Stop making these movies, please.  I might have enjoyed them more when I was 12, but I overheard a couple of fathers saying they had kids who were fans of the book series, and even they recognized that the movie wasn't good.

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