Clash of the Titans

Full disclosure: We saw the 2-D version of Clash of the Titans, not the 3-D version. Full disclosure #2: The film was not shot with 3-D in mind; the 3-D was added in post-production. So, let’s call that a wash. The action sequences may scale up to three dimensions, but the characters are strictly in two, no matter how aggressively everyone hams it up.

And, lordy, do they ham it up. As orphaned hero and (unbeknownst to him) demigod Perseus, Worthington once again displays his gift for acting with his forehead; he spends the first 20 minutes of the film tilting his head down and glowering at the cruel tests life has thrown at him. As cranky but regal Zeus, Neeson rivals the classical enunciation and overripe profundity of Laurence Olivier in the 1981 film on which this CGI-fest is loosely based. Fiennes’s Hades, clad in goth rags and with swept-back hair that suggests an aging heavy-metal rocker, speaks so breathily that you may wonder if all the brimstone in the underworld has given him asthma. The women barely register in this surprisingly chaste take on the ever-smutty Greek mythology.

But Leterrier is aiming for Peter Jackson epicness. Thus, we get wild action sequences involving impressively rendered CGI beasties (giant scorpions, the Gorgon Medusa, a sea monster), sweeping helicopter shots of incredible vistas à la Lord of the Rings, and a brutal, thundering score that suggests that someone has been sacrificed to the god of Dolby stereo. In short, this is cheese of an almost exquisite ripeness, so earnest that it would take a heart of stone not to laugh. It’s bad, but we kind of loved it. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you.

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