Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Day 47 - Movie Review

This is supposed to be a photoblog, but I'd like to take this opportunity to post a little more. Today we took all the sixth graders to see The Lightning Thief. Just to justify our decision, it fits into the curriculum in that we study Greece (and its mythology) plus the kids are reading up the books like crazy in language arts. After seeing the movie, I give it a great big thumbs down!

I've read the first three of five books in the series. They have great story lines and characters. It's no wonder the kids love them. Well, this movie resembled the book very little. I don't expect movies to be exact replicas of the books they are based on, even though the LOTR and Harry Potter franchises seemed to have done quite well in that department. But this was crazy. So much of the story line was changed. With the exception of Percy and Grover, the characters were not developed at all. Even the altered story line was somewhat shallow.

The sixth graders loved it, despite my qualms above. There were some great fight scenes, but that was about it. They liked the action. The movie will make a lot of money targeting this age group. Which leads to an even bigger issue I have with the movie. There was way too much sensuality in a move targeting middle and high school kids. Sexuality and sensuality were used throughout. One of the few scenes that remained true to the book was the main characters plight in Vegas. The movie directors made the poor decision of exploiting as much of the Vegas mentality as possible and still keep their PG rating.

Again, I give it a thumbs down. Make it two thumbs down. When the sequel comes out, I hope they get things back on track.
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