Family Home Theater

Grade:  B
Entire family:  Yes
2013, 106 min., Color
Rated PG for fantasy action violence, some scary images and mild language
20th Century Fox
Aspect ratio:  2.35:1
Featured audio:  DTS-HD MA 7.1
Includes Blu-ray, DVD, DigitalHD
Bonus features:  D+
Trailer

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters is a good special effects family movie that’s every bit as accomplished as The Lightning Thief and possibly better—even if it doesn’t follow the Rick Riordan juvenile fantasy novels like a road map.

My teenage son has read every one of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books, and as our family watched Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, the sequel to the 2010 fantasy-adventure Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, he couldn’t contain himself. He offered a running commentary:

“It’s like they compressed the next three books into one movie.”
“None of this was in the books.”
“This WAS in the books, and it’s actually handled pretty well.”
“I like the way the manticore moves. It’s really realistic.”
“The CGI in this movie is much better than the first one.”

And so on.

His final assessment surprised me, partly because he had seen the trailer and pronounced it “dumb,” and partly because many fans of the books had pretty much washed their hands of the movies because of how much they strayed from the texts. But my son decided it was “better than the first one, with better special effects.” Even though it wasn’t exactly faithful to the books, he felt it was “still good.” If he had give it a grade, he said he’d award it a B+ or A-, because it was action-packed, the CGI effects were great, and the pacing was good. My pre-teen daughter agreed, even though she hadn’t read the books. So did my wife.

So who needs a movie critic? I came to the same conclusions, though I did find fault with some of the CGI effects. For me, the visual shortcomings were the forehead and eye design of Percy’s half-brother, the cyclops Tyson (Douglas Smith)—which looked smeared with Vaseline in medium shots—and Percy (Logan Lerman) and his friends’ descent into the toothy vortex of a sea monster, which also was less than realistic. Everything else—and that includes some pretty fantastic creatures and water effects—looks convincing, and in truth it’s the visual effects that propel the film.  More

Grade: B+
Entire family: Yes
2013, 130 min., B&W and Color
Rated PG for sequences of action, scary images and brief mild language
Disney
Aspect ratio:  1.33:1 (beginning), 2.40:1 (remainder)
Featured soundtrack: DTS-HD MA 7.1
Bonus features: C
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy
Trailer

It seemed almost sacrilegious to mess with a classic like The Wizard of Oz, so my family was a little apprehensive to watch Disney’s prequel that explained how the Wizard actually came to Oz. But it didn’t take long before everyone was caught up in the fantasy. Disney spent more than $200 million on this special effects film, and while the pacing and the visuals captivate, it’s really James Franco’s performance as the Wizard and an abundance of allusions to the 1939 classic that make it fun.

Franco really nails his character, a small-time two-timing traveling magician who comes to the Land of Oz via a hot air balloon propelled by a Kansas twister. In apparent tribute to the original film, director Sam Raimi opts to withhold color until Oscar (whose stage name is Oz) comes to that fantasy world. Purists will wonder, though, why he didn’t go with sepia over black and white for the Kansas sequences, to match the original, and anyone with a smaller television will wonder why he decided to tell the Kansas part of the story using a 1.33:1 ratio—smaller than that, actually, since the small square picture is bordered on all four sides by black bars.

It can become annoying, but as when the plot sags just a bit in the second act, it’s all those connections to the original movie or to elements of L. Frank Baum’s books that make you smile and help to pick up the slack. China Doll never made it into the movie, but she’s here in the prequel, and it gives Raimi another chance to play with the dual roles that we saw in the 1939 film. Joey King, who appears as a girl in a wheelchair in the first part of the movie, gives voice to China Doll, whose legs have been broken. Michelle Williams is both Annie, the magician’s former girlfriend who got tired of waiting for a real relationship, and Glinda, the good witch. And Zach Braff is Frank, the magician’s behind-the-scenes assistant, as well as Finley, the flying monkey who pledges a lifetime of service to Oz’s newcomer. Like Franco, he seems to really have a good time, and that translates into onscreen energy.  More