“Wrath Of The Titans”
Rated PG-13
Grade: D+

By MICHAEL WALTERS
Cantankerous Critic

“Wrath Of The Titans” manages to improve on its predecessor but still commits the mortal sin of making Greek gods and ancient mythological monsters deadly dull.

This time an Alcatraz of Hell holds the biggest and baddest demons around. And they’re about to break free to unleash hell on earth — led by the biggest and baddest baddie of all, the evil father of the gods who longs for freedom. The Titans movies are meant to be special effects extravaganzas, but when every mythological monster becomes an incoherent blur of poorly realized CGI why even bother.

The perpetually pissed off Sam Worthington returns as Perseus, the son of Zeus. The scriptwriters seem to have made a conscious effort to make him more of a character this time around.

Instead of being a petulant brat with heavenly father issues, he’s a father himself fighting to protect his son.

This time its his father asking him for help. The gods such as Zeus (Liam Neeson), Poseidon, and Hades (Ralph Fiennes) have fallen on hard times. People just aren’t praying the way they used to, and they’re on the verge of losing their immortality. So Hades captures Zeus and strikes a deal with their imprisoned dear old daddy to drain Zeus of his power to set the demons free and preserve his own immortality. Thankfully Fiennes no longer sounds like he’s got a cough drop stuck in his throat, but both he and Neeson have clearly put their Shakespearean personas on cruise control for crap like this.

Perseus joins up with a son of Poseidon to track down the architect of the underworld (Bill Nighy).

The movie takes the Conan The Destroyer route by injecting some attempts at humor into the proceedings. Characters are commenting on Perseus’ status as the Kraken killer and ribbing him every time he gets into a jam and needs a little help. But this is an unnecessary sequel in almost every way, right down to the second tier lineup of mythological monsters he’s forced to fight.

Nighy injects some life into the proceedings as he sets them on their impossible quest to break into the underworld Alcatraz and rescue Zeus But time and time again the movie takes a situation or set piece that could yield promise and works it out in the most pedestrian way possible. After two massive 3-D mediocrities, Harry Hamlin’s cheesy 80′s version can’t help but seem to get better with age.

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