Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief. 119 minutes. Rated M. Directed by Chris Columbus; Written by Craig Titley; Based on a novel by Rick Riordan.
Furious flights of fantasy, fuelled by grand, inspirational storytelling have become absolute necessities when filmmakers want to be embraced by the connected generation of young adults around the world. There are millions of hearts to be won and millions of imaginations to be stimulated. There are also, make no mistake, millions of dollars to be made.
In this shameless play for a bigger piece of the pie than it deserves, Percy Jackson (a bland Logan Lerman) discovers that he has Olympian pedigree, and when he is accused of stealing Zeus's (The King of the Gods) lightning rod, he departs on a mission to prove his innocence.
With this first (of what will no doubt be many) Percy Jackson … saga, Chris Columbus (Home Alone, the first two Harry Potter movies), has somewhat embarrassingly, completely missed the point. He is certainly not helped by Titley's leaden, humourless script from Riordan's novel, that struggles with the basics of coherent storytelling and a serious case of Harry Potter envy. My companion's increasingly restless boredom finally got the better of him, and he opted, instead, for all the colour and movement of the cinema foyer – leaving me, and the three others in the audience, to suffer in silence.
Percy Jackson … also entirely underestimates its audience's intelligence and hunger for the truly fantastic – choosing, instead, to dazzle them with some occasionally eye-popping special effects and a peculiar visit to a Las Vegas casino, from which our young hero flees in a Maserati – blissfully choosing to ignore the need for responsibility behind the wheel. Only Uma Thurman's turn as the snake-haired 'Medusa' and Rosario Dawson's spicy cameo as the hell-dwelling 'Persephone' generate any real interest, while the computer-generated environments of Mount Olympus and Hades provide lush, if long overdue, visual support.
The M rating (courtesy of some mean decapitations and various other gratuitous acts of random violence and irresponsibility) will potentially rob the film of its target demographic: children who want to do whatever they can to avoid cleaning their room. But rest assured, they'll be begging to know where the vacuum and the Spray 'n' Wipe are by the time they get home.
This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Geraldton Guardian.
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