This week I got to see a  movie in the theater.  I saw it with Dirty Harry and a friend of his, and despite having to break up a disagreement at one point about a box of Nerds candy and having to sit on the very top row of a large theater (meaning long walks to the bathroom), it was a totally enjoyable experience.

This movie is the first based on the Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan.  Dirty Harry just started to read the first one when we started seeing the movie trailers appear on TV about a month or so ago.  He loved the book and was excited to see the film version.  I had not read the book and was not overly excited about seeing the movie, but the excursion gave me a three-hour Captain Jack Henry break, and I was in need of one,  so I was game.

I was inordinately surprised at how much I ended up enjoying the movie!  The premise is that Percy Jackson is a demigod (half mythological god, half human), but has been living the life of a normal angst-filled teenager, unaware of who his real “divine” father is.  The action gets rolling rather quickly, and through a fantastic and a bit alarming change of events, discovers that his dad is Poseidon, his best friend is a satyr and his protector, and his wheel-chair bound history teacher is Charon and director of Camp Half-Blood, a training ground for demigod children.  The action of the film centers around the theft of Zeus’ master lightening bolt.  For reasons that I found somewhat vague, everyone thinks that Percy has taken it, so Hades, who would greatly like to have the bolt for himself, kidnaps Percy’s mother to the Underworld, in hopes of luring him there.  Percy, with the help of Grover (best friend/protector/satyr) and Annabeth (romantic interest/fellow demigod/daughter of Athena), go on an adventure-filled quest to rescue Percy’s mother and solve the mystery of the missing bolt.

Highlights:

• This movie is just plain entertaining.  I thought I was in for a pre-teen snooze fest and was completely surprised at how taken in I was by the plot and action.
• The acting is decent.  The teens are pretty much a bunch of unknowns (although I thought for half the movie that the main kid was Zac Effron…no, just a look-alike), but they hold their own amongst the big guns of Pierce Brosnan playing Charon, Uma Thurman playing a convincing and creepy Medusa, and Sean Bean as Zeus.
• While it is certainly not a replacement for reading the real Greek myths, it might be a good springboard if your kids are uninterested in this type of literature.

Low points:

Overall I was a little disappointed and surprised that this was given a PG rating because it felt more like a PG-13 in some parts. 

• First of all, at many points, this film is a bit intense.  The violence isn’t bloody, but young or sensitive kids would definitely be scared of Hades or the hydra or Medusa.  In two of the scenes, creatures are beheaded.  If you’re familiar with Greek mythology, then hopefully that’s not a spoiler.  Again, the scenes are not bloody, but are too intense for a PG rating, in my opinion. 
• Secondly, the….ummmm, how do I say this?…well…the sexual tension was a bit much for a kids’ movie.  I realize when you’re dealing with Greek myths and the whole demigod situation, that there are some understood situations that have occurred, and the movie does a fairly good job of glossing over those facts.  However, by making Percy and his friends older than they are in the books (he’s about 12 in the books and about 17 in the film), they have introduced some unnecessary romantic situations.  Grover is girl-crazy and this comes up in about three different brief scenes during the film and involves a distant scene of bikini-clad girls (apparently the daughters of Aphrodite), a group of girls dressed in short, tight dresses in a Vegas casino, and Perspehone (played by Rosario Dawson), the companion of Hades, who makes semi-aggressive overtures towards him in a cleavage-showing outfit.
• There is some language in the film…not a lot, but still unnecessary for a kid movie.

All in all, I rank this as a good movie-going experience with my almost ten year-old son who has seen movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, so wasn’t bothered by the intensity of the scary scenes.  We actually had a good discussion about the other issues I brought up above and why the movie makers alter books when they bring them to the screens.  While I wish they hadn’t added those parts, I don’t think Harrison was greatly affected by them either as altogether they probably took up less than ten minutes of a two hour film.

If you get a chance, see it on the “Big Screen” while it’s still out.  Some of the scenes are worth it.  Enjoy and let me know what you think!