Epitome of dumb fun

Rating: 4/10 (25 August 2010)

In this very loose retelling of the myth of Perseus and his quests which lead him to kill Kraken, Medusa and and host of other beasts everything is big. Except for the storytelling. Cutting bits and pieces of real myths they mold it into a pretentious story about a demigod Perseus, who loves man more than god and will do anything to destroy the gods, including his own father. Well... later on Zeus is a good pal with whom our hero chit chats... but initially he's 'ble'.
I understand the gods like playing with humans, but the whole storyline keeps running into hurdles and instead of jumping them it hits them head-on. This is epitomised by Zeus first saying 'Release the Kraken', but simultaneously assisting Perseus in killing Medusa and giving him a couple of playthings to boot (a sword and even a Pegasus).
Than you also have key elements of mythology unrecognisably changed. Most of it doesn't bother me, but why the scriptwriter introduced a character called Io to be Perseus's fling instead of sticking with Andromeda, sacrificed to the Kraken and rescued by our hero, is a retcon worthy of a head check.
What worries more is the amount of corny lines coupled with bad scripting and less than enthralling characters and you can understand why this movies stumbles to achieve an improvement on the original, albeit the special effects are way more impressive. The last scene of the movie with Zeus and Perseus talking is a telling example, but such sub-par corny scenes litter this movies constantly. The further we enter the movie the more obvious they become, when the clichés and poor character writing (exemplified by the pair of hunters introduced solely for the occasional comedic relief) drag this movie to the ground.
On the plus side the Kraken is really impressive as were the giant scorpions. But even there the action sequences seemed to lack something. All in all it would have probably been better if the movie had copied the route suggested by Zack Snyder's "300" and basically overdid the action, pathos and performances on purpose to make the movie out of this earth.