Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters Reviews
Top CriticPrecious little about this is particularly memorable, but it's the odd touch of local color that makes these routine acts of derring-do a bit easier to bear.
There are plenty of bad films to get riled up about in the summer. "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters" isn't one of them. This is harmless tween-centric fun.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Yes, this is the point in the summer when I outsource my critical judgment to my kids.
You might think it would be endlessly awesome being the offspring of an Olympian god, but it seems like kind of a drag, really, for young Percy Jackson.
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| Original Score: 2/4
In Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, choosing the dumbest character is a colossal task.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Tweens and young teens should be sufficiently distracted by the movie's brisk pace and heroic mayhem - if they're not too unnerved by its at times nightmarish imagery.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Before it descends into Percy Jackson and the Things That Happen in Movies Like This, the adventure at times clicks into the inventive groove of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson novels ...
With its broad humour and less than serious tone, it's clearly aimed at tween and teen set and it's likely to be a crowd-pleaser among that demographic.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The movie feels like a watch-the-bottom-line effort that's determined to skimp on everything - guest stars, effects, spectacle - while bringing in new characters we don't care about.
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| Original Score: 2/4
This film hits its stride in a way the first one never did.
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| Original Score: B
Obviously the bar isn't set that high, but Percy still manages to fumble underneath it.
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| Original Score: 2/5
With the young wizards of "Harry Potter" fading from memory, the demigod teenagers of "Percy Jackson" are starting to seem like the next best thing.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's a shame that the millions of readers who fell in love with Riordan's classic-meets-contemporary children's stories have been handed such limp adaptations of the material.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Percy is a lot like a certain bespectacled young wizard - sans the lightning-shaped scar. It's too bad his adventures don't have the same enchanting quality.
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| Original Score: 2/4
A fetching mix of whizz-bang CGI and full-blooded classical storytelling.
"Sea of Monsters" is diverting enough - the director, Thor Freudenthal, is savvy with effects and keeps his young cast on point - but it doesn't begin to approach the biting adolescent tension of the Harry Potter movies
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| Original Score: 3/5
An epic showcase for mediocre CGI and slapdash screenwriting.
The Thor Freudenthal-directed Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, which actually runs about 10 minutes shorter than its 2010 predecessor, lacks the energetic zip of the Chris Columbus-helmed installment.
Like some hybrid beast out of Greek mythology, this young-adult sequel has the body of a "Harry Potter," the head of a "Twilight," the feet of a "Hunger Games" and the tail, oddly, of a "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
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| Original Score: 1/4
In an age where even The Smurfs 2 has to arch an eyebrow and pretend that it's hipper than itself, there's something refreshing about the lack of irony in the Percy Jackson series.
Supporting actors Stanley Tucci and Nathan Fillion have a good punch line or two, but otherwise the book's humor fails to translate with both kids and their parents.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
The young cast are smug and forgettable; the action sequences barely get going before they're over; and the whole affair is riddled with product placement and pop cultural references ...
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| Original Score: 1/5
It feels as if the filmmakers are coasting on the fumes of teen-angst fantasy and making up their fairy-tale rules (Cyclopes are fireproof!) as they go along.
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| Original Score: 2/5
The mythology-rooted "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" franchise is fairly engaging stuff, unabashed "Harry Potter" knockoff or no.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
There isn't even an actual sea of monsters in "Sea of Monsters," unless you count some fish guts.
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| Original Score: 1/5
