Randy Jackson and His Tightening Briefs

A mouthful of meaningless tripe, isn’t it? Of course it is, but no more so than Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief; a film that I hate not only for its clunky, long-winded name, but also for just being altogether bad. To be fair it is a book title, so it makes sense on one level, but on a far more sane level the book should have just been given a better title in the first place. Percy is an awful name for a boy. No matter how devilishly good-looking, nor what special powers he has, he will always be the subject of gay jokes throughout his teenage years. I should know – my name is Theodore. Why do parents not think of these things when naming their kids, even if they are fictional?

Percy is your average teenager, except that he looks like a Calvin Klein underwear model and his father is Poseidon; a piece of news that he takes surprisingly well. In fact, Percy seems to take everything in his stride, from killing minotaurs to becoming the most popular kid at his new school/camp-thing within fifteen minutes of walking into the place. It’s as though his difficulty curve is the function y = 3, with infinite time on the x-axis. Percy just casually strolls from place to place, collecting magic pearls in exchange for severe beatings and internal haemorrhaging. Nothing is a challenge for Percy, so he doesn’t develop in any way. He doesn’t even get a scratch on that pretty face of his. Percy does have help on his quest, in the form of a best friend; the token minority comic-relief character, and Athena’s daughter; the love interest. I would love to say that any one of these young actors is a real up-and-comer to keep an eye on, but that would be a lie more horrendous than ‘delicious, low-fat yoghurt’. Percy and his pals are like a string of wooden ducks, quacking and waddling back and forth for the camera – they’re cute and fun to watch for a bit, but you don’t care where they’re going or why. The only real acting done in the entire film is by Steve Coogan, who plays a Keith Richards-esque Hades. Job well done, Sir.

The plot of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief runs thus: Zeus gets his lightning bolt nicked and blames Poseidon and his son for no apparent reason. Poseidon doesn’t mention this to Percy because he’s an irresponsible dick and a terrible father, so Percy has to find out from his best friend who’s actually a satyr and his favourite teacher who’s actually a centaur. These two then sit Percy down and explain everything in about twenty seconds, while Percy stares fixedly with an expression on his face much similar to a china doll. Bravo for chopping through the thick, book-like exposition, but they’ve overdone it to an extent that makes it glaringly obvious. It’s like giving a hippie a crew cut – it just doesn’t work with the beard and mandalas. Hades comes into the picture to abduct Percy’s mum, demanding the bolt in exchange for her, which Percy doesn’t have. Percy’s ‘plan’ is to go to the underworld and explain this to Hades, who we all know is a reasonable and empathetic chap. For Percy to have access to the underworld he has to find some special pearls, so instead of spending the majority of the film looking for one lightning bolt, or just finding his Dad and telling him to kick Hades’s teeth in, he travels across the USA and back looking for multiple pieces of fucking jewellery! The plot goes on from here, but you’ve already lost interest, as have I in re-telling it.

What I disliked most about Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is that there’s too much stuff crammed in. It feels rushed. With limited screen time, the characters and their reasons are left by the wayside, and so we don’t care about either. It’s unfortunate, because Percy has wonderful potential to develop as a character, but the script doesn’t allow for that anywhere. Everything is glossed over to such a high shine in an attempt to cover the fact that underneath is nothing but a deep chasm of who-could-care-less.

Oh, and Pierce Brosnan plays Chiron, the centaur teacher. Initially he’s paraplegic but that’s just a cover up, and somehow he can fit his entire horse body on a wheelchair and conceal it with a blanket. He fulfils the role of Percy’s mentor, and because creating a real character is too difficult someone thought it easier to just cut/paste Dumbledore and take a long lunch break. At the end of the film Chiron seems to scold Percy for running off from camp half-blood, and then …BAM! Right out of left field, he congratulates Percy for being a total prat and tells him that he’s his favourite student. The man who sat in front of me had trouble tying his own shoelaces, but he still saw that one coming.