Another Jackson

Why are we watching Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013), exactly? The first Percy Jackson movie wasn't that great - did we think this would be better? No, we thought it would be good enough.

The story in this one: The children of the Greek gods have a sanctuary in an Adirondack summer camp, protected by tree-nymph-generated force field. When the nymph is wounded, the only solution is to go on a quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the Sea of Monsters (what we mortals call the Bermuda Triangle). Meanwhile, Percy's (Logan Lerman) half-brother has appeared - Douglas Smith, whose father was Perseus, but his mother was a cyclops.

So we have Percy dealing with a goofy, long-haired, one-eyed half-brother, a quest with (or against) hyper-competitive Paloma Kwiatkowski, and a Sea of Monsters. Well, a couple of monsters, anyway - a few cyclopses, Charybdis (no Scylla), that's about it.

I can't say there was a lot of great stuff going on here - OK, Stanley Tucci as Dionysus was pretty great. But somehow, we were pleasantly entertained. I guess it's just the way these movies pander to every nerdy kid's love of Greek mythology. I can't say why, but I just felt that they got that. Also, Douglas Smith as a cyclops was a lot of fun - that goofy sibling or pal that always embarrasses you, but you love anyway.

Or maybe we were just in the right mood - I can't say this is a good movie, or even as good as Lightning Thief. We liked it, though.