Clash of the Titans

**1/2 stars

The subject of much controversy, this Easter weekend brings to theatres the new rendition of Clash of the Titans, the big budget remake of the film more famous for being F/X king Ray Harryhausen’s last than for being any good. The controversy comes from Clash’s quickie conversion to 3-D in post-production, a process initiated after studio bosses heard the cash register bells ring off the hook for Avatar. Of course, Avatar had 3-D in mind all along when it went before the cameras. You know James Cameron’s vision and blah, blah, blah. One can hardly blame a studio suit for trying to squeeze out a couple of extra bucks, but you can, however, blame them for the result.

The fault of Clash lies not in the mythology, but in how it ends up being treated. Say what you want about the first Clash, including some harsh words about young Mark Harmon in a toga, but at least one could sense a giddy love of all things Greek. In this Clash, Greek mythology seems a handy system upon which a Lord of the Rings by way of Gladiator story of questing, vengeance and daddy issues can be hung. So far, so unimpressed. And adding insult to injury is the fact that we’re saddled with a Perseus that’s one of those heroes that does nearly as much whining and brooding as he does world-saving.

Sam Worthington beams down from Pandora to fill the armour of Perseus and he does an admirable, if not overwhelming job playing the hero. In other words, he’s perfectly bland but it doesn’t really matter because the point of this movie is action, spectacle and more action. We also get duelling brothers Zeus and Hades as essayed by Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes respectively. What’s interesting, as pointed out by one of my sisters, is that in Clash, as in the other recent Greek-centric movie Percy Jackson, Zeus and Hades are portrayed as rivals. The crux of their divide is never really explained (or understood), but at least Neeson and Fiennes seem to be relishing their roles. Danny Huston, on the other hand, gets treated more like a red-headed step child than the third brother in the pantheon.

The story goes that a kindly old fisherman (played by Pete “more grizzled than ever” Postlethwaite) finds a baby boy in a casket the surfaces in the sea near his boat. This boy is Perseus, who grows up to be a fisherman like is dad. But Perseus’ real dad is Zeus, who seduced the hero’s mom in one of his sex-as-revenge schemes against a spiteful King. Now, here we are, 20 years later, and another act of Zeus defiance results in Hades going medieval over Perseus and his family, who just so happened to be in the neighbourhood. Now this I didn’t like. The notion of Perseus stepping out to save the City of Argos because it’s an obvious path to getting revenge on the guy that smote his family rubbed me the same wrong way as when Tim Burton subbed pre-Joker Joker as Batman’s parents’ killers. Isn’t it enough that a hero does heroic things because he wants to, without being driven by personal, short-sighted revenge?

Well, let’s just assume it is and continue. Leaving Argos, Perseus is teamed up with a group of soldiers led by former Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen. In a montage, they march across various landscapes to receive wisdom on how to save Argos from the gods’ wicked wrath and stop the unstoppable Kraken. Oh yeah, there’s a whole thing in there about saving the Princess whom Hades has decreed worthy of sacrifice to placate the gods’ anger, but no one seems to care. As Andromeda, Alexa Davalos gets the award for most ineffectual damsel in distress in recent film history. Can they save her time? I could care less, and what’s worse is that seems to be Perseus’ opinion too.

But if all else fails, if you can’t have fun at a movie, then there really is no hope at all, and say what you want about Clash of the Titans, but it is rather fun. When the gang of warriors has to fight through giant scorpions, or outfox the enormous kraken while riding a Pegasus, that is a sight to see. But the thing of it is, don’t go wasting your money on 3-D. It doesn’t enhance the experience, although it doesn’t do anything to dampen the experience either. It just seems like a whole lot of wasted money, so don’t go adding fuel to the fire by further convincing Hollywood to dump money on this trend. Save 3-D from itself should be the new motto.

My Life in Ruins

Rating: *1/2

It’s actually pretty hard to catch lightening in a bottle, but to Hollywood’s mind, more often than not, the answer to the question “can you” is a resounding, and self-confident yes. Now, I found myself on the Huffington Post website the other day, and one of the featured bloggers was none other than Nia Vardalos, writer and star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the new Greek-themed comedy My Life in Ruins. She wrote about how Hollywood execs are lowering the boom on movies with female leads citing tough economic times and the fact that women, apparently, don’t go to the movies as much as men. Seems kind of pointless if you ask me, the real moratorium should be on Sandra Bullock-starring romantic mismatch comedies. She’ll be doing that schtick when she’s a senior citizen at this rate.

Anyway, the story goes, according to Vardalos, that she tried to cite Sex and the City and Mamma Mia! as two movies that were highly successful though their target audience was women. Balderdash, said the execs, those were flukes, the random happenstance at the corner of chance and good timing. Naturally to Vardalos this sounded like bull mash, as it does to me as well. But what it really put in mind, especially after seeing My Life in Ruins, was that Vardalos was the fluke, not films starring female leads generally. In fact, looking back, I think you’d be hard pressed to find one person that can remember why it was the phenomenon it was. Like the people that lined up at midnight to buy Phantom Menace toys back in ’99.

The plot of My Life in Ruins is so simple that I can recite it in Tarzan mode. Ready? Lady sad. Lady hate job. Lady hate Greece. Lady sexually frustrated. Wants to leave Greece but not know how. Lady lead tour. That Lady’s job. Lady bad at job. Tourists dumb but teach Lady to find zest for life again. Well, that’s basically it. The lady, whose name is the thoroughly un-Greek Georgia, is played by Vardalos. Her tour bus is filled with the usual odd balls and nationalistic stereotypes: the drunk Australians, the ignorant Americans, the Spanish divorcee whores and the klepto British grandmother. Okay, so Grandma Klepto was actually pretty funny, and Richard Dreyfuss as the world-weary Irv actually worked as Georgia’s Obi-Wan on her quest to find the Force of life.

Is there romance? You better believe there is. Only in a Hollywood movie can the mute, borderline deranged tour bus driver with the look of an al Qaeda insurgent shave his beard, get a hair cut and give James Bond a run for his money at the soave awards. Ugh, just thinking about this clap trap a couple of hours after the fact is enough to give me a toothache with its sugary sweetness. Now I’m not immune to romantic notions, certainly, as R.E.M. once observed, “Sweetness Follows.” But as Mary Poppins once said, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” and the shallow, predictable script is a bitter pill to swallow indeed. Sorry to go all Ugly American on you, but My Life in Ruins has probably done more to deter Greek tourism since The Battle of Navarino.