Stupidity strikes down 'Lightning Thief'
Somebody stole Zeus' lightning bolt, and if the king of the gods doesn't get it back in 10 days, he'll destroy the world.
What? Over a stupid lightning bolt? Who stole it? Why?
Suspicion falls on Percy Jackson, the son of Poseidon (the king of the seas, by the way). Percy lives in a dinky New York apartment with his mom and her abusive partner and doesn't even know who his godly father is.
The story of how Percy discovers his real identity and makes a cross-country trek to find the stolen lightning bolt probably made an entertaining read in Rick Riordan's five Percy Jackson novels.
But as a film directed by Chris Columbus, it's the dumbest, silliest, big-budget fantasy film I can remember right now.
This isn't to suggest "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" (that fits nicely on theater marquees, doesn't it?) is boring. Each scene unfolds with such escalating, jaw-dropping badness, it can't possibly bore anyone.
The acting is awful. The direction is terrible. The dialogue is laughable. The situations are preposterous. And I've seen more realistic combat choreography on community theater stages.
"Percy Jackson" celebrates dumbness. It revels in stupidity. And it assumes we're as IQ challenged as it is.
So when the main characters arrive at a new location, say Hades, they announce where they are, just in case slower viewers need to know.
Percy (the pleasant but underwhelming Logan Lerman) thinks he's just a dyslexic loser with attention deficit disorder. Until a substitute teacher (Maria Olsen) turns into a winged Fury and tries to kill him. (Substitute teachers can be difficult.)
Percy is saved by Mr. Brunner (erstwhile 007 Pierce Brosnan), who turns out to be a centaur named Chiron, half-horse, half-human. He guides young Percy to a secret camp for demigods (the spawn of Greek gods and humans).
As if this isn't enough to process, Percy discovers his best friend Grover (Brandon T. Jackson, mugging away as if auditioning for a TV sitcom) is a satyr - half-goat and half-human - assigned to protect the son of Poseidon.
Meanwhile, Hades (Steve Coogan, who understands the insanely silly nature of this movie and goes with it) kidnaps Percy's mom and won't give her back until he forks over the stolen lightning bolt.
At the summer camp for demigods (where trainees appear to actually kill each other for practice), Percy locks blue eyes with a female warrior, Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), the daughter of Athena, goddess of wisdom.
You'd think a wisdom goddess' daughter might be on the ball, wouldn't you?
Nope.
When Percy, Grover and Annabeth arrive at the Lotus Casino in Las Vegas, eat the lotus cookies and decide to spend their lives there, you'd think she'd remember "The Odyssey" and how the lotus eaters lost their will.
She does. After they escape.
That occurs only because Percy hears his father's voice, like a disembodied Obi-wan Kenobi, urging him to stop eating the lotus cookies.
Why didn't Dad tell Percy about the intoxicating cookies before he ate them?
The gods on Mt. Olympus are no sharpies, either. They're a bunch of sour party poopers who hang around Zeus' palatial pad and look depressed all the time.
Columbus, the director of the first two "Harry Potter" adventures, has no idea if he's directing a straight action fantasy or a dopey comedy here.
Sometimes it's the latter. Sometimes the former.
At least Uma Thurman gets it right. As Medusa, the gorgon with a permanent bad hair day, Thurman projects a perfect balance of seductive evil and comic joy as she nimbly takes her admirers for granite.
Annabeth probably didn't know about her, either.
"Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief"Rating: #9733; Starring: Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, Pierce Brosnan, Alexandra Daddario, Jake Abel, Sean BeanDirected by: Chris ColumbusOther: A 20th Century Fox release. Rated PG. 119 minutes