Movie review in the Friday, Aug. 9 Oregonian....
I've had to review my fair share of "Harry Potter" knockoffs since 2006. A partial tally would include "The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising," "Eragon," "Inkheart," "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant," and probably something I can't remember with a title like "Frankie Haversham and the Mystery of the Alchemist's Worrystone" with Nic Cage as the evil warlock Blastaplast, or something.
And even with all that in my eyeballs, I still find the "Harry Potter"-aping of the "Percy Jackson" films sort of breathtakingly shameless.
Mind you, the two "Percy" flicks -- 2010's "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" and this week's "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters," both adapted from Rick Riordan's novels -- aren't nearly as shabby as most of the other "Potter" copycats. The "Percy" actors have real charm, there's humor to the proceedings, there's money behind the effects, and the series was kicked off by actual "Potter" director Chris Columbus.
But in the films at least, there's something so naked about the "Potter"/"Percy" story parallels that's it's hard not to sit there as a viewer and get distracted playing connect-the-dots. Let's see: A boy with special powers and a lousy home life finds out he has supernatural parentage and gets invited to a remote training school for other special kids where the teachers are monsters and the sports rivalries are brutal and then the boy goes on quests and solves mysteries with his two best pals (a boy and a girl) and there are lots of set-pieces involving monsters and wacky potions and weird transportation and the boy gets caught up in a prophecy and a larger war between old superpowered enemies? Hm.
It's enough of a carbon copy that it feels a bit like watching one of those mystery-solving-teen knockoffs of "Scooby-Doo" that choked the airwaves in the '70s. And after watching star Logan Lerman bring such delicacy to "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," Percy feels like a slight waste of his talents.
Anyway. If you liked/can remember watching "The Lightning Thief," you'll be happy to hear "Sea of Monsters," directed by Thor Freudenthal ("Hotel for Dogs" and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid"), is more of the same, only with fewer off-color jokes and slightly more dramatic tightness.
This time the kids (Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario) are looking for the Golden Fleece to save a poisoned magic tree that protects their training camp, lending a bit more urgency to the proceedings than last time. They're joined in the hunt by a klutz Cyclops (Douglas Smith) and a warrior princess (Leven Rambin) -- the latter character feeling slightly redundant given that the warrior princess from the first film (Daddario) is still hanging around, only now with less to do.
There are one or two shameless nods to "Raiders of the Lost Ark." The guest-star turns from Stanley Tucci as an on-the-wagon Dionysus and Nathan Fillion as Hermes are pretty amusing, and there's a cleverly designed bit with a killer mechanical bull at the top of the film. (Tucci also gets the movie's best line as he complains about Zeus turning his wine into water, and Nathan Fillion is somehow allowed to make a thinly veiled reference to the cancellation of "Firefly.")
Unfortunately, the issues that plagued the first installment persist. The story still has a forgettable exposition-setpiece-exposition-setpiece rhythm that leads to an undistinguished action climax, and the insertions of Greek mythological figures into real-world locales (including a product-placement-y UPS office) still feel more like kitchen-sink-cleverness than part of any larger organic story (though the six-armed barista the kids run into in Washington D.C. is kind of funny).
And seriously, the warp-speed taxicab driven by the three Graeae witches sharing a single eye needs to be roughly 100-percent less like the "Prisoner of Azkaban" Knight Bus or the "Chamber of Secrets" flying car than it is:
Still. If "Lightning Thief" was the "National Treasure" of "Potter" knockoffs, "Sea of Monsters" gets by as the "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" of "Potter" knockoffs. Here's a poster blurb: Your child's attention will be briefly diverted.
________
(106 min., rated PG for fantasy action violence, some scary images and mild language) Grade: C-plus
'Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters' (The Oregonian, Friday, Aug. 9, 2013)
