The classical Greek myths has persisted in the collective imagination since they first sprouted in ancient Hellene. That they have infused themselves into popular young adult fiction in the Percy Jackson series is no surprise, nor is it a surprise that a cinematic rendering should spring from it. The only surprise is that it took this long. The pleasant surprise is how deftly the story translates the myths from their classical idiom into modern ones and without losing the classical flavor.
The eponymous Percy (Logan Lerman) is a demi-god fathered by Posiedon (Kevin McKidd), god of the sea, but as the film begins, he doesn’t know that yet. He does know that he can hold his breath underwater for seven minutes, that he has dyslexia, and that his attention deficit disorder has not made life easy at school, where fistfights in the halls are the norm. It hasn’t helped at home, either, where his mother (Catherine Keener) has inexplicably married a man (Joe Pantoliano) with no redeeming qualities and who carries with him a tremendous stench. It will all make sense in the long run, but in the short term, it will all pale in comparison with what is coming next. Specifically when a substitute teacher turns into a Fury demanding that he return Jupiter’s (Sean Bean) lightning bolt, his teacher (Pierce Brosnan) isn’t fazed by this but instead performs his own transformation, his best friend, Grover (Brandon T. Hall), is revealed as a satyr assigned to be his protector, and his mother is kidnapped by a minotaur.
The ancient gods and goddesses are all too real, Percy learns to his dismay, with his absent father one of them. For further dismay, he learns that the reason he is finding all this out is that he’s the leading suspect in the theft of that lightning bolt, and even though he didn’t steal it, he’s got 14 days to find it or the war that the deities will start will be the end of life on earth as he and everyone else knows it.
After a brief orientation and training at Camp Half Blood, where the demi-gods and -goddesses congregate to perfect their semi-divine powers, and a pair of winged hi-tops courtesy of Hermes’ son, Luke (Jake Abel), Percy, Grover, and Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), the daughter of Athena (Melinda Kanakaredes), goddess of wisdom and battle strategy, set out to save Percy’s mother and somehow convince the powers-that-be to give peace a chance. That Poseidon and Athena don’t get along adds a certain piquant flavor to Percy and Annabeth’s relationship, particularly when she confesses to strong feelings for him, but that she hasn’t decided if they are positive or negative.
What we have here is the classic Hero’s Journey played with a nice blend of boyishness and conviction by Lerman, eerie but effective self-possesion by sword-slinging Daddario, and a splash of wit, thanks to Hall’s hip take on the half-man, half-goat with a social conscience and an eye for the ladies. The trek on the literal highway to Hell has them crossing paths with Medusa (Uma Thurman), dodging more than tourists while visiting a replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, and discovering that Las Vegas attracts more than high-rollers. Hell, in a fiendishly clever move, is located in Hollywood. Of course it is. Also fiendishly clever are casting Steve Coogan and Rosario Dawson as Hades and Persephone, the bickering rulers of the realm of the dead, and then re-imagining them as Goth rock stars.
The pacing is crisp, the writing rarely bogs down, and the special effects that bring it all to life have a storybook quality to them while also being properly scary. The snakes writhing around Medusa’s face may not always ring quite true, but the ride through Hell to Hades’ stronghold is positively poetic, including such wistful touches as the debris of dreams that never came true, as well as the standard, but well rendered, tortured souls doing their own writhing in flames.
PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTING THIEF stays true, mostly, to the mythic framework from which it takes its inspiration, while taking liberties with the novel that make it more cinematic. Aging the trio of buddies into their teens, for example. Treading with caution around the more maudlin elements, it compensates with imagination, high spirits, and sense of wide-eyed adventure.
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