Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters: Review

So, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters opened in theaters this past week. As soon as this movie walked in, took off its robe, hiked up its speedo, adjusted its goggles, blasted some generic top 40ish hit that had no lyrical relationship to the scene, and dove right into thing, I just knew I was going to hate everything about Percy Jackson. But while following the movie it became apparent that this is actually a sequel to a previous movie based on a book series, which I might have known if I had done some research or had an ounce of common sense (what action/fantasy movie isn’t an adaption these days). Thus, as much as I hate to admit it, rushing into things was probably the correct choice by the director, who, coincidentally, is awesomely named Thor Fruedenthal.

Luckily for me there are tons of other things to hate about Percy [squeals with delight]. Let me start by stating how much I hate movies about ancient Greek/Roman gods. And that is such a shame because the ancient gods were an awesomely savage people, constantly conniving against each other, toying with humans, and going around and knocking up peasant girls left and right. Sadly, Hollywood always seems to ‘half-ass it’ with ancient-god themed movies, like The Immortals and The Clash of the Titans franchise, and Percy somehow finds a way to do these ancient and epic characters even less justice.

I had to keep in mind that not only is this a fantasy story intended to entertain preteens, but it’s also an extremely cheap knock off of Harry Potter. I’m personally not a huge fan of the Harry Potter franchise because I’m not a little school boy, but I can recognize well-made crap regardless of who its intended to entertain, and the Harry Potter movies were some damn fine pieces of poo for the most part. There were gorgeous set designs, interesting character developments, creatively crafted scenes where the character/writer/writers displayed imaginative problem solving skills. Underneath whatever window dressing you put over a movie, whether it be dungeons and dragons, or gods and titans, or aliens and spaceships, or whatever, creating characters we like or hate, a story that gives them interesting and difficult challenges to succeed against, and filming it in a way that doesn’t look stupid, is what makes movies enjoyable.

It doesn’t appear that the producers creating movies about the gods really care about annoying details like that. "F it," they seem to say, "we have the gods on our side and the gods only favor the unimaginative!" Percy doesn’t seem to bother with any of that well-crafted story business either. Aside from a few moments, all of the characters exist only to fall down in mud puddles so this Percy Jackson character can walk over them to victory. They seem to have literally no other purpose in this movie but to serve as his counsel, thus making them completely uninteresting. Percy, played by Logan Lerman (super yawn), himself is kind of a downer, constantly needing reassurance from his friends that he is in fact a special little boy destined for special boy things. I’d rant that all of the actors are terrible, but this is really a writing issue.

 It does matter how good you are at your acting craft I suppose, but character are only going to be as likeable or as hate-able depending on what they do and say in the movie. And all the scenes in Percy consist of over-acting actors performing under-written writing. It was sad to watch them try way too hard to be funny. Oh, and the clumsy action scenes where our characters just seem to run around aimlessly until they eventually stumble over themselves into safety… ::shudder:: But even worse than the storytelling in this film are the abominations of CGI effects we’re presented with. I’ve seen better special effects in Vine videos. All of this makes you wonder what this movie’s pitch at being successful was aside from being a quasi-popular book adaption.

Just like The Immortals and Titans, this is a travesty of boring storytelling pulled from a folklore that is oozing with juicy source material like a triple chilly cheeseburger, or maybe Brad Pitt’s or George Clooney’s love lives. But at least those flicks offered stunning visual effects and enough blood and guts to get bros and nerds into the theater. Even a Franchise like Twilight, which is an equally poorly written book series, and an equally poorly made movie franchise, at least got Robert Pattenson to star in order to make every girl of all ages come to the theater regardless of how good or bad the actual movie was.

If it were not for how ultra-fabulous Stanly Tucci is (this guy seriously kills it in everything he’s in), I’d say there’s almost no reason to go see Percy. Unfortunately for Percy, Tucci is only in about a fourth of this movie. The only reason I would ever recommend Sea of Monsters is if you have a kid who has already seen Despicable me 2, Turbo, Planes, and Smurfs 2—okay maybe you can go see this one before Smurfs 2, but just remember that you have been forewarned.