Really lousy

Rating: 4/10 (4 April 2010)

I can't say I had high expectations for it, but, as much as I love the original, it could certainly be improved upon and I had a tiny bit of hope, since this was announced, it could be an improvement. Leterrier, his screenwriters and (maybe especially) the film's star really drop the ball. Yes, Sam Worthington proves twice in just a few months that he is a beacon of suck, just a black hole of a human being who makes everything he touches worse. Actually, I did kind of like him in Terminator Salvation, but these last two starring roles have not been kind to him. The man just has no charisma whatsoever. His Perseus comes off as a whiny bitch, and you kind of don't want to see him succeed. Harry Hamlin in the original is kind of a dull hunk, but at least he came off as a likable hero. Worthington is just a meathead whiner. Almost none of the rest of the cast registers whatsoever, except for maybe Gemma Arterton as Io, an ageless woman who accompanies the heroes on their quest (taking the place of Andromeda from the original movie, who in this one just stays home and does nothing). Arterton's main positive point, though, is her lovely face. She doesn't seem to have much of a personality. To tell the truth, the CGI monsters of the film, which, face it, was the reason anyone's going to go anyway, ain't half bad. I much prefer the original's counterparts, but this film's Graiai, giant scorpions, Medusa and Kraken are all perfectly neat (if not as impressive as the painstaking stop-motion effects of the '81 version), and I was decently excited during their sequences. But nothing else works. I didn't even mention the whole plot about the gods. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes (united for the first time since Schindler's List!) play Zeus and Hades respectively, and they are both warring against an ungrateful humanity and each other. The conflicts are not well enough written to make any real sense, or to make the audience give a crap.