Rating: **1/2Everything about Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief screams mea culpa. It’s director Chris Columbus’ mea culpa to himself for passing up the Harry Potter series after launching it with the first two adaptations, and, I presume, it’s Columbus’ mea culpa to the masses after foisting I Love You, Beth Cooper on us. I kid Chris Columbus, mainly because he’s the red-headed step child of Harry Potter filmmakers having made the least inspired and textually limiting of the Harry Potter movies. Alfonso Cuarón had style while Mike Newell and David Yates had the benefit of more adult-minded material (and in the case of Yates, the added comfort of knowing how the series ends).
So with all the fortitude and impetuousness of a drunken robot yelling at security hooligans that he’s going to build his own theme park with black jack and hookers (Futurama reference), Columbus found another supernatural kid to invest in. Based on Rick Riordan’s novel of the same name, The Lightening Thief follows young Percy Jackson (played by Logan Lerman) as he learns that he’s not a struggling teen slacker with dyslexia and ADD. No sir, he’s the son of Poseidon, Greek god of the seas and earthquakes. That dyslexia he’s got, it’s just his brain hardwired to translate everything to Ancient Greek. And the ADD, why it’s his warrior instinct itching to keep him up on his feet and ready for battle.
Like any good young hero moulded in the Campbell tradition, Percy receives guidance from a wise elder, in this case embodied by his wheelchair bound teacher Dr Brunner, who, in actuality, is the centaur warrior Chiron (both played by Pierce Brosnan). No sooner does Percy discover his lineage does he have to do a runner. Zeus’ famed lightening bolt was nicked and for some reason, Percy’s the prime suspect. Hades then kidnaps Percy’s mom as leverage to get Percy to give him the bolt in exchange for his mother. So with a quest at hand, Percy gets assistance from his new allies Grover the satyr (Brandon T. Jackson) and Annabeth, the severe daughter of Athena (Alexandra Daddario). He also gets magical tools to help with his mission including a pen that turns into a sword and a pair of sneakers that are literally wing-tipped thanks to Hermes. So cue the AC/DC and let’s start on that Highway to Hell.
Now I’ve never read the Percy Jackson books, but I do know that in the original Lightening Thief the main character was 12 rather than 16. I suppose, Columbus wanted to buffer himself in some ways from Potter, and though I would never say that this a line-for-line pastiche of J.K. Rowling’s wizard world, a lot of the same story beats are here. In other words, in keeping with a lot of youth novels getting screen time in hopes of having Harry-like success, I just can’t see what makes The Lightening Thief so startlingly different that it screamed, “I must be adapted.”
Truthfully, I found the movie harmless if nothing else. It’s a satisfying adventure that hiccups over some rather obvious musical cues and some uncomfortable winks to the current world climate, especially Grover’s references to recession-induced cash saving measures. The young actors do a serviceable job to their characters, but a lot of the adult actors seemed sidelined in their parts, as if they were merely there to move the plot along. The casting also seemed a bit chaotic. Steve Coogan as Hades? Really? I take it Paul Reubens was unavailable. However putting Rosario Dawson in the part of Hades’ wife Persephone and giving her a Desperate Housewives style makeover was not necessarily a bad idea. And as I watched The Lightening Thief, an intriguing question occurred to me: who would win in a fight, Sean Bean’s Zeus from this film or Liam Neeson’s Zeus from the coming soon remake of Clash of the Titans?
But back to The Lightening Thief, which despite some serious cynical aspirations I cast, was not actually all that bad. Of course, how a group of teenagers criss-cross the United States inside 10 days is a travelogue of 24 proportions, but this is fantasy after all. I think what really holds this film back though is the filmmaker’s rather clinical vision. Of course Mount Olympus, now accessible through an elevator at the top the Empire State Building’s observation deck, is the exact same Olympus visualized by mortals for thousands of years with clouds, columns and togas. How dull. But despite that, The Lightening Thief isn’t a total time burglar. Sequel? Why not.
