Something stinks, and it's not the Kraken's breath...

Rating: 4/10 (23 January 2011)

As a great lover of most things 'long ago' and a fan of this sort of film, I had perhaps unreasonably high expectations of this one. Oh dear.
The casting wasn't great. Instead of a lovable everyman to get the audience on his side, we instead receive a quite dislikable and somewhat thuggish-looking, shaven-headed Perseus played badly by Sam Worthington. Liam Neeson is an unimposing, henpecked-looking Zeus. Lord Voldemort voices Hades wonderfully early in the film, until Ralph Fiennes gets control of his alter-ego and finds a different accent to use (and that voice aside, his performance was quite good). In the half an hour since the film ended I've pretty much forgotten what Andromeda did, so unused was the character, so I can't say much about her; and Perseus's merry men were neither good nor bad.
Saved until last, Gemma Arterton as Io was surprisingly good... well, once I'd come to terms with Io being ripped from one part of the mythology and inexplicably transplanted into this story, hilariously as a 'love interest' for the son of the guy who got her pregnant then turned her into a cow. Then Pegasus appeared (now a species, not a specific horse), and he was a badass black horse who scared all his white mates away.
Just as I was dealing with that, a djinn appeared out of the wrong mythology entirely and struck a devastating blow for odd Hollywood storylining. On the bright side he looked like a baby ent, on the downside... what was he doing in Greek myth? Similarly, the Kraken - who sent him? Loki, Thor? And if we can push the name aside for a moment, why was Hades controlling the SEA monster? Why did Andromeda volunteer to be sacrificed to it? And why did it totally ignore her for ten minutes? As a saving grace the effects are pretty good, and Pegasus looked very nice in flight. One battle scene was decent if a little hard to follow, and some of the acting was good too.
Maybe I ruined this film for myself, but if you know a little about the mythology you'll spend at least half the film picking at it.