Jack and I went to see Percy Jackson and the Olympian, the Lightning Thief last night. Going to a movie on Friday night was not easy, because the full workday gave me a headache. It took me a while to unwind, but luckily the movie Showtime was at 7:30 PM, so I had plenty of time to relax before the movie started.
We both enjoyed the Percy Jackson book series, and thought of it as the lesser of the Harry Potter books. Even though the writing and the use of language was not as good as Harry Potter, the stories were creative and full of fantastic elements. So we couldn't expect less of the movie, especially because it was directed by Christopher Columbus, the director of the first two Harry Potter movies, which were my favorites.
The movie was really bad on all fronts. It couldn't have ruined the book more completely.
The acting was terrible, there was no chemistry between the actors whatsoever.
The teen stars, who were the main characters of the movie, lack the acting talents. The girl who played Annabeth, daughter of Athena, totally missed the mark. Her sword fighting was so poor, it looked like the sword was too heavy for her. The way she swung it was out of control, and after a few rigid moves, she was huffing and puffing. I guess all they care was her long hair, which she did a beautiful job swaying. In the book, she was the brain of the quest, but in the movie, she didn't show intelligence.
Even the adult movie stars such as Pierce Brosnan, who played Chiron, performed poorly. He was so stiff. I was not impressed with the lady who played Percy's mother either. Uma Thurman was fine, but she had a small part and her head was cut off early in the movie. I have to say, all of the actors look so detached from others and from the story.
The screenplay changed the story so much that many intriguing elements from the book were eliminated, and were replaced by mediocre acts. In Half Blood Camp, the movie eliminated the amazing inverted U shape of the cabins of each Olympian god, which the children of these gods resided, once claimed by the god. There was no dining scene in the movie, so they didn't have to show the ritual of giving food to the gods. Annabeth didn't have her Yankee cap, which made her invisible. Annabeth's affection to Luke was non existent. Ares, the war god, and his daughter, Clarisse, didn't exist in the movie, that got rid of many interesting scenes. In the gods' summer solstice gathering, instead of everyone wearing cool modern outfits, such as Poseidon's Hawaiian shirt, board shorts and sandals, they had all the gods wearing ornate Greek armors and robes.
We wonder what happened to this movie. They have great material to work with, a good cast minus the unknown teen stars and a supposedly well known director. Though we knew it wasn't for us to figure out, but at this point, we decided to blame the director, who should have the total control of all aspects of the movie production. If it was their intention to produce a mediocre movie just to satisfy teenage kids, then they have done it well, as we heard applauds at the end of the movie.
This movie was worse than a Disney TV movie. Miley Cyrus is a much better actress, just a thought. :)
The most refreshing part of the evening was watching groups of teenage kids entering before the show, and listening to responsible parents telling their kids to behave well in the public, such as take their legs off the seat rest in front of them and washing their hands after going to the bathroom.
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