Beware would-be fantasy fran chises bearing Greek gods, es pecially if they have tongue-twisting titles like “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.”
That goes double if you’re not prepared to go with the idea of Pierce Brosnan as an apparently gelded minotaur (“Yes, I have a real horse’s ass”) running an institution called Camp Half Blood.
Adapted by Craig Titley from his tweener best seller with a similar name, this is the latest in Hollywood’s long series of attempts to create another Harry Potter. It’s even directed by Chris Columbus, who initially helmed that cash machine.
Columbus’ struggle to find a consistent tone, as he did in the first two “Potter” films (before he was replaced by better directors), is even more evident here: The film toggles between high camp and deadly earnestness, all the while threatening to drown in an ocean of not-so-special effects.
Played by Logan Lerman — the Zac Efron look-alike who was young George Hamilton in “My One and Only” — Percy is a Manhattan high-schooler who learns he is a demigod. He’s the offspring of Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) and a mortal (Cathleen Keener) who subsequently married a local lout (Joe Pantoliano) in order to, as she explains, “mask the smell of your blood.”
This revelation comes out after Zeus (Sean Bean) wrongly blames Percy for stealing his lightning bolt and threatens a war with Poseidon that will finish humanity. For reasons I couldn’t quite comprehend, Percy’s mother is kidnapped by their brother Hades (Steve Coogan), even though he is supposedly exiled to the underworld.
Joined by a tiresomely motormouthed satyr (Brandon T. Jackson) and the butt-kicking, demigod daughter of Athena (Alexandra Daddario), Percy sets off on an odyssey to save mom.
The first stop is New Jersey (and the first of several nods to “The Wizard of Oz”), where they face down Medusa (an over-the-top Uma Thurman) with the help of a Hummer and an iPhone. Then it’s off for lotus-eating in Las Vegas, where the PG rating really pushes the envelope for suggestiveness.
Titley’s most inspired idea is to locate the entrance to hell — where Rosario Dawson camps it up with Coogan — just under the Hollywood sign. Having Mount Olympus accessed via a phony-looking mockup of the Empire State Building’s observation deck seems a trifle obvious, though.
“You’ve been unconscious for three days,” someone tells our hero at one point, and after two hours of “Percy Jackson,” I was starting to feel the same way. Did that satyr really hint that President Obama is a demigod, or did I just dream that?