The Percy Jackson series,to it’s fans, is cleverly based on greek mythology, presenting these stories as funny,modern,and unique. While to unfamiliar folks,they come across as cheap,cardboard cutout Harry Potter rip-offs that only exist to create franchise films like the one we are about to discuss.
Logan Lerman’s performance as Percy is all too forgettable and flat. He’s the kind of character that tries to be the heart of the story,but ultimately gets tripped up by his bland acting,and uninterested expression of his character throughout the film. Alexandra Daddario (Annabeth) doesn’t fair much better. She has the exact same problems as logan,but the added issue that she seems lost in the film,and not in a good way. It’s as if she stumbled upon the film set and got mixed up in the entire production by mistake.
Douglas Smith (Tyson) on the other hand,fairs much better than the previous two actors mentioned,if only for the fact that he seems even a little invested in what he’s doing. BT Jackson and Jake Abel (Grover and Luke, respectively) pretty much both have the same problems as each other. They both seem very over the top,and a little corny. Clarisse was just there. She served her purpose,(though not very convincingly) and nothing more.
For a movie called Sea of Monsters,there aren’t many monsters in the film,especially compared to the amount in the book. The monsters that ARE in the film though,are very well handled. The first beastie we meet is a colchis bull. The best way i can describe this creature is a very steampunk stylized bull,and that’s AWESOME. The Charybdis (a kraken type monster) was an interesting concept, but nothing we haven’t seen before. They do some cool things with the main antagonist,but it’s nothing mind blowing, and he could have used a lot more development,which we will hopefully get in future films. All the monsters looked lifelike,and creative.
The writing is where this film really falls flat though. Literally,it’s flat. Which is very impressive since it’s based on a book that’s writing is anything but flat! The screenwriters obviously did the bare minimum to keep it true to the book. However it loses the book’s tone and the overall feel that fans loved about this series so much. This movie just didn’t know what it was doing,but to be fair,the writing WAS better then The Lightning Thief.
However, don’t let any of this deter you from the book version. Where the movie fails, the book does anything but. The series is compelling, very character based, fast paced and full of originality. If the screenwriters had taken the book seriously, kept the tone of it, and were dedicated to the story, then we might have had a movie worth watching.
*Special thanks to the wonderful and amazing Madeleine for helping write this review*