Over the weekend, I went to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. I actually went to see The Young Victoria, but for some reason the 7:05 showing was sold out 45 minutes in advance in Bethesda. Only in Bethesda are people clamoring to see a two-month-old movie during the dinner hour, I guess.
Plan B was Percy. The title, to me, sounds like a great band name and first album title. (“Climbing up the charts this week are Percy Jackson and the Olympians with their debut release The Lightning Thief.”) I was very turned off by the fact that this was a Chris Columbus film, but in the end, the combination of my curiosity about why Catherine Keener decided to make this movie and my preemptive excitement for the new Clash of the Titans won out. As did my companion’s reluctance to see anything remotely suspenseful.
The movie was actually full of famous people: Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Rosario Dawson, Joe Pantoliano, the hot English dude who was on Journeyman and who’s on Gray’s Anatomy now, the weird looking English dude with the bad hair, and the menacingly sexy English dude who always plays German terrorists.
Dawson was, like, the best Persephone ever.
The lead kid is cute, and he has really pretty blue eyes, so when he’s brooding about everything going on, it works. The daughter of Athena was pretty good, but kind of wooden at times. And the story was fun. It was almost a little too major for a full-on kids’ movie, but is comparable to some of the later Potter films in terms of its darkness factor.
Sequel? Likely. Is this based on a series of books? It felt that way. Now that the public’s appetite for kids’ movie series has been whetted by Potter, I’d expect this is a move to cash in and keep us hungry.
Charles Jensen | Writer 
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