Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

Director: Thor Freudenthal
Starring: Logan Lerman, Alexandra Daddario, Brandon T. Jackson.
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Runtime: 106 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2013

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Rating notes:

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters is a sequel to Percy Jackson: Lightning Thief, from 2009. The two films are based on a series of novels by Rick Riordan, very popular, serving as a possible substitute for Harry Potter stories. However, the films did not have the success anticipated though they were popular.

Logan Lerman is Percy Jackson, the hero, the son of Poseidon and a human. Along with other half-bloods, he goes to a park where they are sheltered from interaction with humans. In the first film he was given a quest. In this film he has another quest.

While in the first film, actors appeared as the gods, they do not appear in this film, only Hermes as an American businessman (Nathan Fillion) and Kronoss as a computer-generated Titan.

Percy is a modest young man, with a sense of destiny which he does not want to pursue, rather plagued by self-doubt. However, he is encouraged by the managers of the park, Stanley Tucci and Anthony Head, playing Chiron the Centaur, to pursue that destiny, especially after he has defeated a monstrous special-effects bull which has invaded the park. 

The quest takes him and his friends into New York City with three strange Fates and a taxi, to Hermes and his factory, to Washington, DC, to a boat going to the Caribbean, to the discovery of a Civil War submarine, to a strange destination in the Bermuda Triangle which appears as an entertainment park, complete with a roller coaster. He has to confront Luke, who has betrayed his half-blood heritage and the gigantic god Kronos. He is accompanied in his quest by the athletic champion, Clarisse, as well as Annabeth who has a crush on Percy and Grover, his centaur friend. Also along is a young Cyclops, Tyson, who turns out to be a half-brother of Percy.

Quite some action at the end, Percy achieving the quest, the return home and the celebration and the possibility of another film in the series.