Salt Lake Tribune Review
From beginning to end, "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" whiffs of highway "Harry Potter" robbery.
It's directed by
Chris Columbus, who helmed the first two "Potter" films. It stars a teen boy with special powers who teams with friends to fight off evil. And sparkling special effects whirl around every frame, as if Professor Dumbledore himself waved his wand on the set.
Even the title of this latest children's fantasy epic has the boy-hero-versus-the-world flair familar to Hogwarts fans. "Hollywood & and the Battle Royale for Originality," anyone?
The similarities shouldn't deter families -- even "Potterheads" -- from seeing this flashy and spirited teen adventure. There's still enough difference between the universes to make this mythological journey worthwhile.
Based on the children's book series by Rick Riordan, "Percy" involves Greek gods instead of wizards and a Camp Half-Blood instead of Hogwarts.
Percy (
Logan Lerman of "Gamer" and "3:10 to Yuma") is a regular high-school teen from New York who discovers he is the offspring of Poseidon (
Kevin McKidd) and a human mother (
Catherine Keener).
Blessed with the same water-based powers as his father, Percy is wrongly accused of stealing Zeus' (
Sean Bean) signature lightning bolt. In order to find the real thief, the boy is forced into hiding at Camp Half-Blood, a training camp for demigods like Percy.
Hades (
Steve Coogan), brother of Zeus, appears at camp and kidnaps Percy's mother to get the powerful bolt of lightning for himself.
With the help of a friend (Brandon T. Jackson) and the daughter of the goddess Athena (Alexandra Daddario), Percy sets out on a cross-country quest to find three pearls that will allow him and his friends to go into the Underworld to rescue his mother and escape without harm.
Along the way, the teen wiz-- er, demigod -- and his cohorts encounter a menagerie of Greek mythological creatures including a minotaur, the multiheaded Hydra and a creepy-but-seductive Medusa (
Uma Thurman). The computer-generated monsters are a nod to the stop-motion magic of legendary special-effects guru Ray Harryhausen ("Clash of the Titans," "Jason and the Argonauts"), even if they don't have the same charm.
While it all feels like a premeditated attempt by Fox movie studio to create its own multimillion-dollar franchise, "Percy Jackson" manages to be colorful escapist entertainment on its own merits, especially when the movie wends its way to a spectacular battle above the New York landscape.
It may not have all the sweetness and charisma of the beloved boy wizard, but "Percy Jackson" still can ignite the imaginations of its own brand of fans.
-- Vince Horiuchi
awesome movie
Submitted by: braxton
this movie was way awesome i really enjoyed the movie
Bad movie!
Submitted by: byling
This review is from my 9-year-old son who loved the Percy Jackson book series:
It was a horrible movie! I read the book and they left out all the funny parts and twisted it until they had a horror movie. Read the book indtead. It is much better. If you go to the movie I would not recommend bringing little kids. Even though it is rated PG do not believe it. I'm not sure any little kid could see that movie and not have been traumatized, I was.
The rundown: While an Americanized "Harry Potter" copycat, this adaptation of the children's book about the teen son of Poseidon is still a mostly fun and exciting journey. 119 min. (V.H.)
Synopsis:
