Perseus the half-god half-mortal son of Zeus embarks on a perilous journey to stop the underworld and its minions from spreading their evil to Earth as well as the heavens; a remake of the hokey 1981
While I didn't find anything all that abhorrent about this film, I did find it rather mediocre...
The main problem being that there isn't any real conflict to keep the audience interested. Everything just comes too easy to Perseus, there isn't any struggle to him battling creatures or foes; to him it just comes naturally. Like an ancient Greek version of Superman, what's the excitement in watching a nigh-invincible dude ease around every situation? All the action and the events happen in a of matter-of-fact way; none of the characters back stories are fleshed out, so there isn't really any involvement with them. The film quickly jumps from one scene to another without taking the time to engage with any one character or scene, perhaps in an attempt to squish an epic tale into a tight hour and a half. I left the movie thinking, 'well not much happened in that'. Which isn't really true, many things happened, just none of them seemed as epic and grand as they should have been.
The acting is okay but I wouldn't dare call it good. All the actors seem half into their roles, like they're putting their best effort out after a night of hard drinking. I can see Liam Neeson stammering off camera, "Hey...at least I remembered my lines, godammmit!"
One of the worst flash forwards I've seen in quite some time happens in the opening sequence where a fisherman finds a boy (Perseus) in a chest that has risen from the sea. Then the next scene is an older boy at night although there isn't anything to tell the audience who he is or where we are. Is this the present at night time, is this the future, the past, who's this kid? It's this kind of ham-fisted film making that continues on throughout the movie that simply can't allow for good character development or suspense build up.
On the upside, the visual effects were pretty good, but these days that's like saying the sky is blue. Show me Hollywood budget special effects that are really terrible, then I'll be surprised.
Overall I'm disappointed, it's the kind of movie that you would imagine would be easy to make fun and interesting. Instead what we have is a movie that stuggles to eek out any real entertainment from source material that has entertained generations for hundreds of years.
Favorite moment:
The battle with Medusa, she's a babe when she's not trying to kill everyone; well that and the whole lower body of a snake thing...
Worst moments:
The strange flash forwards and cuts that make it seem like I'm watching a French New Wave film
11/2 out of 4 stars
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