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Top Critics (27)
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Fresh (68)
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DVD (9)
I thought it was mischievous and witty and amusing and I was just sort of drawn into it.
Director Chris Columbus has brought together the modern and mythical spheres with sharp pacing and a nifty sense of fun that atone for the film's dippier moments. It's his most enjoyable effort since Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Dutifully Potteresque it begins, and dutifully Potteresque it ends.
Has all the CGI sorcery of a Harry Potter pic, but none of the magic.
Percy Jackson, you are no Harry Potter. You are not fit to walk in a hobbit's wake.
Harry, Ron and Hermione: Relax. You could whip Percy Jackson and his pals with your wand hands tied behind your backs.
The premise of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief holds great potential potential the film never realizes.
Percy Jackson is simply uninspired in every single meaning of the word. It's probably the crassest, most obviously derivative work of this sort since Eragon.
It kind of just builds up to a lot of Not Much.
Manages to pay its respects to the Greek myths and actually convey them as fun.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief proves to be a satisfying beginning to what is sure to be a promising film franchise.
Just another mediocre fantasy flick, but if you enjoyed the books, I'm sure you'll enjoy the film.
An enjoyable PG-rated family adventure in its own right, but Columbus' film can't live up to the Potter gold standard, and it strays enough from Riordan's source material to make its tween readership blow a gasket every few minutes. [Blu-ray]
Not a perfect film, but the movie does have a certain passion that a lot of other franchise attempts have lacked. If you like Greek mythology and are looking for an antidote to Clash of the Titans, this may be what you're looking for.
A great family film, with just the right measures of action, mythological allusions, humor, and adventure.
Of all the would-be Potter projects that have hit the screen over the years, this is one of more polished and enjoyable ones.
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... a sprightly Harry Potter clone and an eye-candy-coated intro to Greek mythology.
While this flick may not have Harry Potter's complex world and multiple layers, it also doesn't have the angst and darkness. It replaces them with one thing in bulk: Fun.
Another attempted launch of a teen-aimed franchise, but this show-boat is rowing through the motions. Seen-that, been-there fantasy-epic stuff with dialogue more wooden and hollow than the Trojan Horse.
What surprised me is that I had some affection for an action adventure film the way I would have in the days of the Ray Harryhausen's best films.
A Harry Potter wannabe - but not a bad one . . .
A fun, effects-filled, escapist adventure, with several clever notions: Medusa sells garden statuary as a cover, and the Parthenon in Nashville is home to a hydra.
A safe, bland, test-marketed product made for tween mass consumption. Like most films arriving with ampersands and colons in the title, it's a bore.
It looks like the characters of color in Percy Jackson have been paired off, a remarkable choice in a movie that is, in essence, about the glories of half-breeds.
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