Percy Jackson: but where were the spiders / while they fly tried to break our balls?

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lightning Thief
movie; recent release

i had a bang up evening yesterday. i stole an amazing pen from the cheesecake factory--i really hope that that wasn't the server's personal pen, because if it was he's probably missing it as much as i'm loving having it. i had two beers. i got to hang out with friends. and i went to barnes and noble. admittedly those fruitcakes don't have the loveless #9 that's been filling my hopes and dreams with girlish (read: desperate) anticipation (read: craving), but i did get to get into this awesome 1970's edition of frederica--because you can never have too many editions of frederica. frederica, by georgette heyer. find an awesome older edition and read it at your local mega-bookseller's today.

oh, and i saw percy jackson and the spiders from mars.

i mean, the title makes some sense--the bad guy does kind of look like david bowie.

oh, wait, that's not the title. well now i don't get it at all.

oh, wait, no...no, i totally do. you have to understand that this movie works on a plane of INCREDIBLE analogic subtlety. "percy" is actually "perseus," for example. "auntie em" (or something) is MEDUSA. the "em" stands for the "m" of the first letter of her name. the lotus eaters operate out of vegas, and olympus is on top of the empire state building, and the demigod camp is hogwarts, and zeus is boromir. you see it? there's a pattern, by which ancient greek myths are related to modern-day america...and j.k. rowling. a lot of j.k. rowling. and daddy issues. dear god, the daddy issues.

i'm being a gigantic jerk right now--a., there's no fault in borrowing from an author that one likes, or who's been successful. rowling borrows from c.s. lewis; bronte borrows from gothic literature...everyone sounds like someone. b., analogies don't have to be complex to be successful. everyone i know loves casting favorite shows and books (sex and the city springs to mind, also we had an epic lord of the rings brainstorming session once in a carl's jr) with friends and relatives. c., some of the best conceits ever have sprung from major daddy issues. i should focus on something more germane to the movie itself--

like the fact that the dude who plays percy jackson pretty much seems to consider himself the next zac efron--but he's not. he's no zac efron. the fact that a 27-year-old female is willing to defend zac efron from possible copycats says much more about that 27-year-old female than it does about either zac efron or the dude attempting to copy him, but i still say, hey, percy jackson actor, get your own schtick. the problem is that he seems to think that the zac efron thing sells, and it does, but that doesn't mean he can do it and expect it to sell just as well...although it might.

or the fact that athena's warrior maiden daughter is hot, a pretty good actress--and has no characterization or real reason for being in the movie. or the fact that grover is annoying. or the fact that the plot seems to have been strung together in order to make the cgi possible, like handelian recit, if the cgi is the aria. or the dialogue. dear gods in heaven-or-possibly-at-the-top-of-the-empire-state-building, the dialogue.

i know i should be lenient, because, again, i'm hardly the target audience here. i haven't read the books, for example. i'm not an 8-year-old boy. i didn't much like 300; why should i be expected to like 300 lite? but, okay, percy jackson and the gigantic absent father-figure movie is really a piece of crap. the imitating zac efron thing is indicative: this movie is doing what it thinks sells. it hired christopher columbus, who made harry potter into such a mess in movies 1 and 2. its soundtrack swells appropriately but without any character. it inserts a "strong" girl and then doesn't have her do ANYTHING aside from stand there, drive a car, and have glowing blue-gray eyes. the cgi is impressive, but, in the manner of that of avatar, literally nothing we haven't seen before. i remember that hades demon-figure from end of days...i think. he's much more elegant in this iteration, but it's the same idea.

a-ha-ha-haaanyway. i knew it was going to be bad. and i got this rocking pen out of my excursion, so it wasn't anything like a wasted night.