Big, brash and boring

Rating: 2/10 (24 April 2010)

Kick-Ass. The Dark Knight. Avatar. Sherlock Holmes. These multi-million Hollywood behemoths have recently proved that blockbusters are perhaps no longer the mindless orgy of explosions and crap acting that we had previously expected. Clash of the Titans is directed by Louis Leterrier and having recently worked on the Hulk reboot in 2008 I had decently high hopes for his latest effort. Unfortunately, Clash of the Titans is, whilst great to look at, pretty darn rubbish.
Good old swashbuckling Greek myth adventure films of the past always had likable and entertaining stories to make up for their laughable special effects. This remake on the other hand has a ridiculous and stupid storyline that is easily summed up by the film's set-up. Basically, Perseus (Sam Worthington) is annoyed with Zeus (Liam Neeson) because the God punished a mortal king (Jason Flemyng) by posing as him and getting busy with his wife. The humans of Argos are fed up with the Gods and their treatment of mortals and decide to start rebelling. For some unknown reason, the God are a bit weedy and so need to call upon Hades (Ralph Fiennes) and his pet Kraken to help defeat the human uprising. From here on it's the basic and boring hero's tale in which the god awful (pun not intended) Sam Worthington fights some monsters, gets with a sexy lady (Gemma Arterton) and saves the day. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
OK, maybe the lacklustre plot is sparked into life by some good acting? It isn't.
As already mentioned, Sam Worthington is as bad as he was in Avatar and in Terminator Salvation. Gemma Arterton looks nice but does little else and Liam Neeson looks as bored as he did in The Phantom Menace. Ralph Fiennes gives the best performance of the lot but don't expect any Oscar nominations for this bunch (perhaps a few Razzies though).
As I said at the start, Clash of the Titans does look quite spectacular. The special effects are top of the tier and the battle scenes are quite impressive. However, put te 3D glasses on and it's a different story. It was clearly tacked on rather than carefully constructed like in Avatar and it clearly shows. The 3D scenes have a blurry, bleeding look, like a busy watercolor. If you want to know what's happening, flat may be a better bet. In other scenes, actors seem to pop out against flat backgrounds like figures in a children's pop-up book.
I came out of the cinema disappointed. The film had a decent cast, a proved blockbuster director, a good opportunity to expand on a much loved story and it just does not work. The acting is generally poor, the story is a joke and the 3D is terrible. In 2D this is a standard and uninteresting CGI-filled blockbuster which is leagues behind the top tier examples of the other Hollywood blockbusters of the past few years. It's big, brash and boring.
1/5