Thursday, January 16, 2014

Sea of Monsters, Percy Jackson, Olympians

A fun flick.  It never came to Littleton, so I watched it when it came to Netflix.  It's a movie adaption of a well selling young adult fantasy series of books by Rick Riordan.  If you like the books, you want to see this movie.  If you haven't read the book, you may find the plot/action difficult to follow.  Alexandra Daddario has a good role as Annabeth Chase,  Percy's girlfriend.  She goes questing with Percy, stands shoulder to shoulder with him in battle,  and has as many good lines as Percy does.  The film makes it clear early on that she and Percy have a thing going, and although both roles are melodramatic, they play them convincingly.  Logan Lerman as Percy Jackson doesn't look as cute as he did in the preceding movie (Lightning Thief), his hair is cut shorter, and he looks tougher and  more dangerous. 
   As a fantasy movie, there is a lot of CGI.  Some of it was less than satisfying.  The Civil War confederate ironclad, CSS Birmingham lacks the distinctive silhouette of  the Merrimac, or even CSS Tennessee, and is equipped with such modern conveniences as electric searchlights,  radar,  and 40 mm Bofors auto cannon.  The crew, Confederate ghosts/zombies, don't look very Confederate, or even very southern. They skip the scene in the book were Tyson, the cyclops, goes below to keep the steam engines running as CSS Birmingham attempts to pull out of the Charybdis whirlpool.   The Golden Fleece, object of the quest, looked more like a fancy table cloth than a fleece. 
   This is probably the last of the Percy Jackson movies.  It cost $90 million to make, was released in August, and so far has only earned $68 million, according to IMDB.  Too bad, I enjoyed it.  Nice old fashioned good guys and bad guys, good guys win movie. 

   
  

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