Review

Review Date: 14-February-10
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Junk

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)

If I weren't a fan of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians books, the movie adaptation of The Lightning Thief might have squeaked by with a rating of "Just OK." After all, this is a slump season in theaters, and the movie's Greek-myth-for-fun-and-adventure motif lends it a certain distinction. Yet on top of leaden dialogue and a turgid soundtrack, the movie made me endure the bastardization of a story and characters for which I have warm and fuzzy (i.e., protective) feelings. And that makes me crankier than Charybdis.

Percy Jackson is in fact a bastard, son of the sea god Poseidon and a mortal woman who has raised him on her own. (Catherine Keener looks surprised to find herself in this mess as the mom.) The hero's parentage is about the only thing that has transferred from the book intact. When Percy (Logan Lerman) and his satyr pal Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) leave their prep school for Camp Half-Blood, the training ground of demigods, they embark on a series of action scenes devoid of personal or mythological interest or notable special effects. From camp they set out for Hades, tussling with Medusa (Uma Thurman) and a hydra along the way. Later, Percy engages in a showdown wearing flying sneakers, apparently because Harry Potter zips around on a broomstick and this movie's director, Chris Columbus, also helmed the first two Potter pictures. Conspicuously missing are the camp's director, Dionysus, and the god of war, Ares, who occupies a central position in the book. Time constraints may have necessitated such omissions, but then there is no excuse for the expansion of Percy's relationship with his father (Kevin McKidd). In Riordan's imagining, as in ancient myth, the gods are self-absorbed, remote entities who think about their offspring on rare occasions, usually when they want to use them. Here they are loving beings cruelly prevented by Zeus from expressing their parental affection. These and other plot changes suggest that the studio is not committed to the Percy Jackson series since they undermine the groundwork for the sequels.

The biggest disappointment of The Lightning Thief is Percy himself. The movie offers no reason to like him. He has been altered from an awkward 12-year-old to a fairly hip teenager, perhaps to enable him to drive across country in stolen vehicles. He lacks the dawning realizations about his past, powers, and place in the world that endear him to the reader; revelations are dumped on movie Percy all at once and he appears unfazed by them. His underdog vulnerability drips with falseness, as evidenced when he wins a game of Capture the Flag with the swagger of a bull-headed Minotaur. Relationships with his mother and friends feel fake because they all come straight out of Hollywood's cookie-cutter machine. His would-be girlfriend (Alexandra Daddario) has been reduced to a cartoon, and Grover's reincarnation as the Comic Black Sidekick is more horrible than the hydra. (This stereotype Must. Die. For. Ever. Right. Now.) Finally, criminally, movie Percy is completely humorless. The book is narrated by the hero with a biting and hilarious wit. Consider the titles of the first two chapters: "I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-algebra Teacher" and "Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death." You have to love a kid who thinks and talks like this, but that kid is nowhere to be found in this movie. While myths are open to reinterpretation, well-written characters should not be distorted so casually.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.