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Loud, predictable and devoid of any of the whimsy that make the Harry Potter films so lived-in, this long-titled film is the kind of movie that parents fear: A kids' movie that holds absolutely zero interest for anyone who isn't completely familiar with the books from cover to cover. Sure, the Harry Potter movies may not have all the elements that made their book sources so impulsively intriguing, but Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (my, doesn't that just roll off the tongue?) is absolutely inert as a movie, so rigid and leaden that it feels like Medusa got director Chris Columbus in her periphery before the guy got a chance to oversee a second draft of the script.

The Lightning Thief follows the Harry Potter redux narrative paradigm of having a kid who thinks he's a weirdo turn out to be the savior of the universe - where Harry Potter considers himself a clumsy Firestarter of sorts in The Sorcerer's Stone, The Lightning Thief finds Percy (Logan Lerman) as an outcast, ADD-stricken teen who 'just doesn't fit in'. Turns out he's the son of the god Poseidon, and once this information comes to Percy's attention, he's whirled off into a world of god-on-god warfare, run-ins with characters from Greek mythology (the Hydra shows up, as does Uma Thurman as Medusa), and even a little kissy-kissy action (with Athena's daughter, played by Alexandra Daddario).

I have spent a lot of time defending the directorial merits of Chris Columbus over the years. Sure, Bicentennial Man was unwatchable, and anybody responsible for Jingle All the Way deserves a serious lashing, but his Harry Potter films are lovely, engaging constructions, and the guy knows his way with kid actors (just look at Adventures in Babysitting). But his Rent felt a little off, I Love You, Beth Cooper was a Porky's-lite misfire, and this Percy Jackson thing is a full-blown mess. There are a handful of masterful shots here - when Percy realizes that water can heal his wounds, Columbus spins his camera with Quidditch-esque verve - but this is an auto-pilot movie directorially.

But The Lightning Thief was relatively popular worldwide (it didn't even cover its budget with its domestic take), so it's likely that we'll have to suffer through more installments of this thing, which is a dubious task, to be sure. I haven't read the books these tales are based upon, so I can't vouch for their merit one way or the other, but Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief as a movie is an entity that families across the country will shrug through on Blu-ray Disc.

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