Chris Columbus thinks you’re an idiot – or maybe not

You can’t stop Chris Columbus. He’s the man responsible for Harry Potter 1 & 2, Home Alone 1 & 2, Christmas with the Kranks, and what is possibly the worst movie ever – Bicentennial Man. He’ll make terrible children’s movie after terrible children’s movie and despite it these studios will keep giving him cartloads of dollars to churn ’em out. Why shouldn’t they? His movies sell like hot cakes. Chris Columbus has been making movies since 1984. That means I can chart almost every year of my  life by each bloated, saccharine, mewling movie he’s ever released. On Tuesday I sat in on a mythology class that I will be teaching in the spring. The teacher showed her students Columbus’ most recent cinematic fete – Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.

Our movie begins when someone steals Zeus’ thunderbolt (yes that Zeus). In response, Zeus (the Olympian Toby Keith) declares that a “War of the Gods” will commence if he doesn’t get it back within 14 days on solstice or some old bullshit.  Immediately, the camera cuts to a marble columned hall full of beautiful people start snarling at one another while stalking around in togas. In Greek myth the gods were tremendous douche-bags. They only came down from the storied heights of Mt. Olympus to screw around with humans (make that statement as literal or figurative as you want – the movie takes it literally). When their actions threatened the stability the humans had fought to create and maintain they would head back up to Olympus and be like, “oh we can’t interfere – anymore because we’re gods or whatever.” In this aspect the movie is quite accurate in its characterization. No one sneers better than Sean Bean as Zeus. He looks magnificent as he sneers his way around Olympus in his Joel Schumacher inspired gold nipple vest doing absolutely nothing to fix his own problems. So he’s the king of the gods – why doesn’t he find his own lightning bolt? Bean’s Zeus is a petulant child. Also, and this is a spoiler – so, you know, just in case – when the gods get themselves into a shite-tizzy they require a half-god/half-human dupe to get them out of it. The gods can’t go back on their outrageously destructive promises, so they need mortal heroes to fix their dumb mistakes. It is exactly like Christianity, but in reverse; get it?

Outside of Olympus, a great cloud and storm grows to ever more epic proportions. (Newscasters will repeatedly inform us that the storm is uncommonly threatening and that people should probably be afraid of it or something). These newscasters function as something that very closely resembles a Greek choragus. Although, on this second point it would have been much more interesting if they had broken the fourth wall and started to comment on the film’s action more directly. Instead they leave it to the audience because that wouldn’t happen in a Chris Columbus movie. It wouldn’t be fun. It is at this point that we are introduced to our hero: Percy (Stupid Name) Jackson. Characterization is also something that doesn’t really happen in a Chris Columbus movie so Percy’s only real character trait is that he can inexplicably hold his breath for a long time. Wacky, huh? I thought so too. What a hook to hang a movie on. He lives with his mother (Catherine Keener) and his mean ole step-dad (Joe Pantoliano). He goes to school with his wacky minority friend Grover Underwood and takes latin from Pierce Brosnan.
After defeating a Fury on a museum field trip, it is revealed that Percy is the son of Poseidon, Grover is a Satyr, and Pierce Brosnan is Chiron. Roger Ebert tells us to “give Brosnan credit for looking like he’s worn the back half of a horse his whole life.”

Percy is promptly whisked away to Camp Half-Blood (yep, that’s what its called – you can’t make shit this dumb up) where they are attacked by a minotaur. Catherine Keener is killed or something. Hades (Steve Coogan – I know, right?) appears and tells Percy that he will release her if Percy brings Zeus’ thunderbolt to the underworld. The movie is about a lightning thief, remember? So the roadtrip part of the movie begins. Percy and his rag-tag group of friends drive across America on the wackiest, wildest trip ever! At every step they fight a monster from Greek mythology in a scene set as loosely around those ideas as possible.

Friends -this is a terribly lazy movie. Anemically plotted along episodes that revolve around a vaguely Greek-ish location and a CGI (and therefore threat-less) monster one comes away feeling as though they’ve been inadvertently exposed to a toy commercial for toys made of Chinese lead. Perhaps that comes from the element of  racism that seeps in, like liquefied feces. Percy’s bff and “protector” Grover is a walking stereotype. He is those two awful transformers with goat legs. Wait for the scene where he breaks it down in the club.

Take that Frederick Douglass.

Go ahead and rewatch that scene and we’ll run through some facts again. This movie has Sean Bean, Steve Coogan, Rosario Dawson, Pierce Brosnan, Catherine Keener, Joe Pantoliano, and Uma Thurman. This could have been a pretty freaking rad movie. But it isn’t a complete waste of time. In fact, if I’m reading a hint of something right – its downright subversive. Like the Lotus eating Vegas hoteliers the heroes encounter in act two, CC is drugging you to hide his great swindle. Therein, however, we see the possibility that CC is in fact a SECRET GENIUS. I will reveal CC’s swindle thusly. Percy is helped throughout the movie by Luke Castellan. Luke is the son of Hermes. He is notable for using winged keds to fly. Luke is also revealed to be the eponymous Lightning Thief. In a last act reveal, Luke explains that he stole Zeus’ lighting because he believes that the gods a)have ruled for long enough and b) are doing a terrible job with their godhood. In his mind, Luke knows that Zeus’ “War of the Gods” will lead them to wipe each other out and then he can take over. As the movie wound down to its inevitable conclusion: Percy returns the lightning bolt and whatever, I found myself wondering if CC hadn’t pulled a secret switcheroo on his audience. Did he just make a movie where the hero died? vanquished by the upstart villain? In terms of perspective, I was wholly on the side of Luke. In the world of the movie the gods are total dicks. Why should Percy support them? At this passe I leave you reader; ponder if you will the potentially brilliant end of this movie.

Fighting Trousers whaaat?

I love steampunk as much as the next guy, trust me. When I was thirteen years old I started a lawnmowing company. It was called Big Grapes.  This was long before I began my love affair with Marxism – I still believed in the acquisition of property through honest labor. Friends, Barack Obama was not even a glimmer in the shadow of this nation’s mind then. Those were the Bill S.Clinton Dot.Com days. In the summer of 1996 you could play Monopoly at your McDonalds while you ate your McRib sandwich and I had three lawns that I mowed. I took the money I was given. My sister drove me to my gigs. I made $46 a week and I used it to buy CDS. You guys remember CDS, right? Remember, this post is about Steampunk so you can rest easy: I’m not being Ironic.

That summer I bought Chumbawamba’s debut album, the aptly named Tubthumping. This was not a terrible album. Listening to it again after 14 years I conclude that Chumbawamba is a band who was smarter than their audience. Once the audience figured that out they abandonded Chumbawamba. And, having no audience but myself, I guess I know nothing about this. I bring it up because a few days ago I found this video:

I bring up the raggedy ghost of the nineties because Professor Elemental sounds a lot like the lead singer of Chumbawamba but I can’t tell for sure. Regardless, I suspect that Professor Elemental is as smart as his audience; which is why I present him to you. I hope you give him a chance. Its not often you meet a steampunk/Victorian-era emcee Professor who raps about “Kingsbury Rules” and “Fighting Trousers.” This sort of thing should be given patronship.

Party on Dudes

“April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

– “Big Papa” TS ELLIOT

Memory is a cruel trick teasing expectation with the best pleasance drawn from the senses and stirred with imagination. Returning to memory and making it sense of the real again is a confrontation that leads (more often than not) to real loss. People change. They grow old. They forget or they never knew. Buildings are torn down. They are not replaced. The mind contorts reality anyway, changing what was into something that was never. Friendships were never as bright. I conclude that reality rarely holds up to scrutiny. But would you know what doesn’t disappoint? Sometimes movies don’t disappoint (what did you expect? the blog is about movies, remember?) Walmart, Tuesday Night. The rain was ice now. I found Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey in a two-for in Walmart’s $5 bin. I was knuckled under. Forgoing my original plans for that $5,  bought the films. You should watch them. If you liked them when you were a kid then you will still like them and in rewatching them, you will find new reasons to like them. If you didn’t like them before you should give them another chance. Consider this a litmus test, you know, for determining if you’re a good person or not.