Fridae

Oh, Chris Columbus! Where would teen and family-friendly cinema be without you? From Gremlins to Home Alone to Mrs Doubtfire and the Harry Potter series, this director-producer possesses (more often than not) a Midas touch that turns bubblegum pop movies into box office gold.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief marks the resurgence of movies with Greek mythological themes this year, and is a big screen adaptation of Riordan’s series of novels for teens. What Chris Columbus brings to the screen is a highly creative and personal visualisation of the novel; while Riordan updated Greek mythology to a modern day setting, Columbus manages to infuse plenty of pop cultural references and jokes along the way to make it more than just a by-the-numbers ‘faithful’ or ‘stalwart’ adaptation.

To wit: Zeus got his lightning mojo stolen from him and threatens to unleash something like WW3 onto the world. As everyone suspects an ordinary teen diagnosed with dyslexic, Percy Jackson, of being the “lightning thief”, the sets the stage for the unwitting youth to discover his divine parentage and embark on a quest to save the world and solve the mystery of the lightning thief.

Much of the movie involves solving some mythology themed puzzles (almost akin to the Da Vinci Code), but its strength lies in the director’s deliciously witty re-imagining of Greek myth. The most hilarious sequences that fully justify your admission fee would be Uma Thurman as the Medusa by channelling the lonely eccentric fashionistas of Grey Gardens, Rosario Dawson playing Persephone as a Desperate Housewife, and Brit comedian Steve Coogan as a rock star Hades. Yet it’s the recurring joke about the enormous appetites, lusts, and penchant of the Greek Gods for leaving dozens of illegitimate children that are the most cutting and funny.

Chris Columbus has the right approach to Greek mythology. While the ancient tragedians sought to make great drama out of the divinities, Columbus realises there is much comic potential to be mined when the gods are portrayed as close to being human: even with their great powers, they are can still be very much petty, short-sighted, and selfish fools ripe for heckling.

And strangely enough, by following his natural instinct for comedy, Chris Columbus also illustrates just how far family-friendly and tween-friendlky entertainment has pushed its boundaries, with this movie’s good-natured almost-adult jokes.