Clash Of The Titans (3D)

Oh dear lord, what a mess.

Basically, this film has no particular soul or charisma. It has sequences of
events, but it doesn't have a plot. It has people wandering around saying
things, but it doesn't have characters.

Basically, the King and Queen of Argos irritate the Gods, and so the Gods
unleash the Kraken to destroy it. Quite why the Greek Gods are so hard up for
natural disasters that they have to borrow sea monsters of the Norse isn't
explained. Still, having sat in uncomfortable chairs in Argos waiting for the
staff to get their fingers out and fetch my purchase from the stockroom, I'm
basically OK with that.

The gods represented in this by Rafe Fiennes, slumming it horribly as Hades.
The rest of the gods are sitting on their mountain being out of focus, while
Fiennes does his warm up in preparation for the major Movie Villain work he'll
be doing in Harry Potter later in the year. Lord Voldemort (for it is he) gives
them the option of sacrificing the princess rather than the entire city being
destroyed, which I thought was rather sporting of him.

The King decides to go for a third option, and dispatches Perseus to kill the
Kraken. How he knows that Perseus is a demigod is not clear - Perseus certainly
doesn't look like one, he's more like a second rate Aussie Soap actor. The hair
brained scheme is formed to go get the head of medusa to use on the Kraken, and
so a mob of Argos employees and the Aussie Soap actor are dispatched to do that
thing. They are all pretty much indistinguishable, and I'm pretty sure that on
the way more of them die than actually started out. This is what's wrong with
the film; it's a standard questing party movie, but you really don't to know
any of them very well before their inevitable demises. Some djinn, some giant
scorpions, and stuff are introduced on the way, but it's all by the by. Liam
Neeson turns up now and again as Zeus, but nobody seems to know if he's a good
guy, bad guy, or what.

I want to make a special point of being very rude about the 3D effects. This
film was apparently shot in 2D, and then postprocessed into 3D. What this means
is that each scene appears to consist of two or three 2D planes stacked in
front of each other, onto which different elements of the picture are
projected. This has the effect of making the film look incredibly artificial,
and has the opposite of the intended effect, being a constant reminder of the
2D nature of the film. Also, the film is incredibly murky, since no allowance
for the fact that you'll be wearing your 3d glasses has been made.

Hence, if you were going to see this film, I would suggest you see a 2D print.
But I'd much more strongly suggest that you go see something else, or failing
that, stay home.