Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
Chris Columbus directs another kids’ movie, age-adjusted Home Alone. The PG13-ness is preposterous, satyrs having sex must be implied, but chopping off Medusa’s head can be seen directly.
The protagonists do everything, the entire world revolves around them. Particularly our demigod, it’s truly ridiculous. The main antagonist is the son of Hermes, which wants to end the gerontocracy ruling Olympus and give it up for the younger generation. He is unceremoniously dumped in the Hudson river, and Zeus which was about to start a war with Poseidon over this theft, stands down and doesn’t give a shit about it.
The other protagonists are Ron Weasely (the aforementioned Satyr, the comic relief, wants to bang anything that moves) and Hermione Granger (daughter of Athena, strong, smart, played by Alexandra Daddario). As usual, the hero bags Hermione in the end, it’s only natural.
All the actual adults here have nothing to do, they just sleepwalk through it. Pierce Brosnan is not even suave, just doing his worst posh accent. Uma Thurman plays Poison Ivy, again. Rosario Dawson plays her character is Sin City. Steve freaking Coogan collects a paycheck. The rest of the gods are glorified cameos. Catherine Keener plays a goddamn mom, for fuck’s sake! There’s nothing here for adults!
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.