Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lighting Thief Movie Review

By Eddy

For Percy Jackson and the Olympians, D and I were hoping for a type of Harry Potter but with Greek Gods instead of Witches (I am pretty sure that the movie executives had a similar box office results in mind as well).  I am sure people who actually read the popular series of books scream that the two series are nothing alike.  Yet when you consider a story that has a young boy with an abusive caretaker, who is an outsider in his normal world but super special in the secret world that he is introduced to at the beginning of the film, who then goes out with two other friends to accomplish a seemingly impossible goal and solve some kind of mystery, of which they of course do using everything they had learned recently.

Now, what does that story line remind you off?  Harry Potter, well you don’t say!

Now just add Greek Gods instead of witches, demi-gods instead of students and Camp Half Blood instead of Hogwarts and you have Percy Jackson and the Olympians (makes you wonder why J.K. Rowling doesn’t sue them for stealing intellectual property, oh yeah, that’s because she did the same thing with Harry Potter , seriously I actually do like the Harry Potter books!).  Adding to a sense of déjà vu is the fact that the director of the first two Harry Potter movies, Chris Columbus, directs this movie (I guess this Columbus is not interested in discovering anything new). Bad joke aside, this movie is basically a water downed version of most of the Potter films in the series all compressed into a two hour film and that is what is the biggest problem of the film.

The story and director is so keen on getting to the good parts and moving the plot along that there isn’t really time to actually develop the characters and the connections within the film.  At one point Percy loses his mother and the next moment we see Percy and he really isn’t that broken up about it.  The plot also tends to jump around from scene to scene leaving the audience no knowledge of how much time has gone by, one day we see Percy being introduced to Camp Half Blood the next he is fighting with a sword without any problem and this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of unexplained things, also included is why are Greek Characters such as Medusa (played by Uma Thurman…don’t ask me why) are wandering around the U.S. along with various Greek relics.  There are so many jumps in logic and holes in the plot that I spent most questioning how the book was popular if it was anything close to the film and when you have Divina even rolling her eyes you know it’s a bad situation.

Now I know most parents are going to be forced to watch this movie, and believe me I feel sorry for you but there is also one more piece of info that I think you should know especially for those with smaller children.  There are a couple of scenes that are pretty scary (images of burning demons and other monsters that would have given me nightmares if I saw them when I was little) so please consider this before you end up going.

In the end I would rather read the book (and I probably will) than go to see the film At least get a bigger bang for your buck with five separate novels out on the market at the moment.

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