Margarita Movies

Dan made some noise about being ill for this week’s Margarita Movie. Han and I treated this with the usual level of respect we give Dan when he claims he’s going to be ill - none at all. We don’t even bother making alternative plans because we know full well that come 11am on the day Dan will text us saying ‘YO I FEEL BETTER, TIME TO PERCY UP’, and this is just what happened this time around.

I’ve missed the last two MMs because I’ve been either ill or in Las Vegas, so I’ve been fiending on some of that sweet Pink Taco action. We rocked up, threw down some pink alcohol, ate some pink mexican food, and hurriedly devoured some of the amazing Pink Taco churros while one of the barmaids we are friendly with told us some of the worst jokes we have ever heard. At this point we were primed and ready for what we assumed would be a reasonable Harry Potter knock-off:

So there’s this kid, Percy Jackson, in New York, and we know from the advertising he’s the son of Poseidon. There’s about ten minutes of slow build-up to this just in case they blew the mind of anyone who missed the trailer. Percy goes to a regular school in New York and his mother is married to Joe Pantoliano, who is playing this sort of odious sexist bastard evil stepfather type. “Bring me my beer, wench!”, that kind of thing. He pretty much tells Percy “FACE, I’m gonna fuck your mother tonight!” at one point.

I know I’ll forget this if I don’t mention it now, but it turns out that his mother is staying with Joe Pantoliano because he smells so awful it masks the scent of her demigod son from all the gods. This is FUCKED UP. She’s basically an indentured servant to this ghastly man to protect her child. It reminds me of that bit in 24 where Jack Bauer’s wife bangs a bunch of terrorists to protect Kim Bauer.

Anyway it turns out that absolutely everyone Percy knows at school that has any dialogue at all is some sort of mythical creature. His black friend is a satyr, his teacher is a centaur (played by Pierce Brosnan doing the most indefinable accent I’ve ever heard), et cetera. His black friend is seriously archetypal. He is full of black people wisdom, says “aw hell no!” a lot, and you know he isn’t going to have a shot with the leading lady because he’s just a sidekick and Percy is going to be all up in that whenever she turns up.

And turn up she does! The leading lady is a saucy piece of jailbait that claims to be the daughter of Athena. In case you haven’t noticed by now, all the white kids are the children of gods, and the black kid is a half-goat beastman creature. The subtext is dubious to say the least.

The Greek gods really aren’t the main deities of the film - the Plot Gods are. In service to the Plot Gods, a by-the-numbers Percy-and-his-friends-must-go-on-a-quest story creakily falls into place, and the kids have to fuck off all around the USA looking for some magic pearls by which they can nip into Hell and then get out again, after telling Hades that they do not have The Lightning Bolt. That’s the objective of the quest - they don’t have this item, they don’t know where it is, so the plan is to go to Hades and tell him they don’t have it. Exciting stuff!

Pearl 1: they go to a garden shop, Medusa turns up, they win (by distracting her with an iPhone).

Pearl 2: they go to some museum thing and steal it, the Hydra turns up, they win.

Pearl 3: they go to Las Vegas, the Lotus-Eaters turn up, they win.

That’s pretty much it. I’m not kidding about the iPhone bit, either. Meduma Thurman gets distracted by the amazing device, and Percy lops her head off with a sword.

Plot coupons collected, they are ready for the final boss battle, which is to go to hell and tell Hades they haven’t got the shit he wants. They go to hell (via Hollywood, which is where I live), and Steve Coogan is Hades. Americans probably aren’t aware of his older material but he generally does a lot of comedy stuff where he plays middle class bumbling idiots, primarily a middle class bumbling idiot radio DJ, Alan Partridge. Persephone is down there with Hades, played by lovely, lovely Rosario Dawson. Hades kisses her at one point - watching Alan Partridge kiss Rosario Dawson is almost too much injustice for me to bear.

It turns out that Percy had the lightning bolt on him the whole time, conveniently. There’s a kerfuffle, and… fuck, I can’t remember what happens. I know they only have three pearls to get everyone back, and they’ve rescued Percy’s mum at this point so someone has to stay with Rosario Dawson, which is presented as a bad thing for some reason. They should be fighting over who gets to stay.

Let’s just say they all get out. They all get out, and then Percy has to fight the SECRET SUPER BOSS, which is the kid who actually stole this Lighting Bolt in the first place and caused all this nonsense. Percy WINS using his water powers that he has because Poseidon is his dad.

They give the Lighting Bolt back to Zeus, and the film thankfully starts to end with some “and it all turned out alright after all” bits, like Black Kid managing to escape from the fell clutches of Rosario Dawson, for some reason. He happily shows Percy that his horns (remember, he’s a satyr) have started to grow in, some sort of rite of passage or some such nonsense. You might say that Rosario Dawson GAVE HIM THE HORN haha sorry. The film really strongly implies that Rosario Dawson fucked this child, by the way. It feels like there’s a scene where she just teases him and he embarrasses himself trying to kiss her that they forgot to include, because in the film I saw, they definitely boned down.

Once again, back is the incredible, the rhyme animal, the incredible SCALE scale!

S - Story: this film fucking sucks. It’s such a shameless Harry Potter cash-in they even have a fucking quidditch scene, cleverly disguised as Capture the Flag. It’s got a plucky male hero, his saucy jailbait girlfriend, and a black kid instead of a ginger kid, off having adventures. I give such a slovenly unimaginative rip-off 3 out of 10.

C - Comedy: A firm wah wah waaaaaah to every attempt at humour in this film. 2.

A - Awesomeness: there’s a Hydra. And Sean Bean. And some stuff, I suppose. 4.

L - Ladies: Rosario Dawson pumps this up to an 8 on her own. I wish her father Les was still around to see what a beautiful woman she’s grown up to become.

E - Et Cetera: This film is already fading from my memory so fast I might as well have taken a drink from the waters of the Lethe, so I can really only give a 2. Wait, what film am I reviewing?

-Nick

Next week: WOLFMAAAAAAAAAN!