Having not read the books, I'm not sure if the flaws come directly from the original story or if they're the creation of the film makers, and they're more omissions and missed opportunities.
Without devling too far into spoiler territory, I was frustrated on a number of occasions by the fact that Logan Lerman's titular Percy Jackson, who has the power to control water from his father Poseidon, fails to do so when it would be advantageous on no less than six occasions. And most of those occur while he's in a boat in the middle of the goddamn ocean!
Even if they didn't want his water powers to become a handy solve-all for every situation, there should at least have been a moment where he attempts to use the power and it doesn't have an effect for whatever reason... and that does happen at one point, but it almost too little too late by that point. It's also doubly annoying when a mythical themed MacGuffin is presented to the characters to take the place of something that Percy could easily do with his water powers.
And speaking of powers, with the exception of Percy and Douglas Smith as the new cyclops character, Tyson, there isn't a lot of godly power on display... once again Alexandra Daddario's Annabeth, daughter of Athena, feels like she isn't given anything to do as a character... and to be honest, I completely forgot which deity she was related to until she mentioned it.
While I'm not completely sure it's a flaw, the "star" list for this movie is much, much lower. Last time we had Sean Bean, Pierce Brosnan, Steve Coogan, Rosario Dawson, Kevin McKidd and Uma Thurman... this time around the story mostly focuses on the youngesters, so the star list consists of Anthony Head taking over the Brosnan role, as well as Stanley Tucci and Nathan Fillion as the only gods with screen time.
Having said that, the young cast does pretty well without them. As I mentioned, Daddario is still highly underused, but Smith's Tyson does tend to steal the movie a little... he plays the cyclops as incredibly sweet and innocent... and even with the single eye, he's still quite cute (but I do like me a little bit of strange every now and again).
Even with the moments with the lack of water powers which drew me out of the movie a little, for the most part the story was engaging (and more interesting than the original) and the visual effects were gorgeous, especially the "stained glass" sequence and the hippocamp.
Now it's just a matter of waiting for the next movie, since the end of this one sets up the idea of a third movie in no uncertain terms.
yani's rating: 3 Colchis Bulls out of 5
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