Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

"In order to restore their dying safe haven, the son of Poseidon and his friends embark on a quest to the Sea of Monsters to find the mythical Golden Fleece while trying to stop an ancient evil from rising."

So, I'm doing something a little different this week: movie review! This is mostly spurred on by the desire to rant about this movie 'cause it was, um, astounding. In many ways. Let me begin by saying this: it was resoundingly, wonderfully, hilariously awful. In continuity terms anyway. Seriously, you thought the first movie went off the book? Nope, the screenwriters were just getting warmed up. I kid you not, I think that they opened up the book at random after writing about ten pages of script, put the random scene in, commenced to improvise for the next ten pages, and then the cycle started all over again. They changed actors, made up characters, scrambled to introduce ones that should've been in the first one, jumped the gun on some fragmented future plotlines (can you say 'prophecy?'), and OH YEAH, basically made up everything from halfway in to the end. My friends and I moved past the 'nudge each other when they get something wrong' phase within ten minutes, which morphed into 'nudge each other when they actually get something remotely right.' Which didn't happen often.
BUT. Having said that, I will freely point out that the second movie was a lot like the first: if you ignore the book, it's actually kinda good. Sure, a little cheesy at times, but really not too bad. Stanley Tucci and Nathan Fillion helped a lot with the comedy factor (and I mean, jeez, that man can slip a Firefly reference into anything). If you squashed your sobbing inner book-lover, you'd really enjoy it. I even did, in between being outraged at the writers. So, honestly? It might be worth it. If you've never read the books or are willing to set them aside, go see it. If you're afraid of it spoiling the book for you, don't worry. You can basically treat it like it's not even remotely related. But yeah! It's downtown this week in the Coliseum, maybe go check it out...