Clash of the Titans

Despite my misgivings, based on many reviews on the net, We discovered this movie to be NOT the total cheesefest I was expecting. Despite some serious flaws, it was a fairly fun swords'n'magic popcorn movie. The problems: Sam Worthington's acting style is identical in this movie to his non-CGI portrayal in Avatar and Terminator:Armageddon... just like his haircut. I will guess they couldn't find a wig that looked less silly than him being the only man in Ancient Greece with a buzz-cut. However practically every performer in this movie had a more animated personality than the hero. This is not good... I fail to understand Worthington's appeal as an actor or why they couldn't have cast nearly anybody else in this movie. Ditto Gemma Atherton as Io. Both actors had their moments, but blandness was the overall effect. The supporting performers were excellent however. The throwaway gag with the mechanical owl from the 80's movie was absolutely unnecessary, and took me right out of the story. Also, there was a lot of woozy 'shakeycam' work in the first 30 min of the movie. Fortunately it went away after that. The action scenes were far too cut up and jerky... is that really necessary? What struck me most about the movie was that it had the bones of a much better movie. The sets and street scenes in Argos were excellent, and the look of Olympus and the other gods there were excellent (despite their Roman-style armour and togas).. we saw too little of this. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes pushed their roles to the edge of camp, but managed not to go over the edge. Bottom line -- it was a mix of very good and pretty stupid. I'm still waiting for a production that gets it right. These are some of the founding myths of Western Civilization, Hollywood... let's have a little bit of serious effort go into their portrayal, please.