Writer of Pop Culture

Let me begin this review by stating that I’m actually a big Disney fan. I know that it is trendy as of late to criticize everything that the mouse house has been doing the last year (some of it definitely warranted), but that is not the case with Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I just didn’t care for it. Maybe you just have to be the right age to appreciate the story or perhaps, you just need to suspend disbelief to enjoy the new TV series on Disney+. Or maybe the silly script would be alright if the makers of the series tweaked it some to make it a little more exciting. At any rate, this new series might do well for its intended audience but probably won’t actually be a “family” series where moms and dads will get excited to watch as well. Then again, that isn’t anything new either. Disney Channel and Nickelodeon have been making numerous TV series meant to be viewed by the whole family, but we know darn well that those laugh-tracked sitcoms with their eye-rolling jokes and cringe-inducing over-exaggerated facile expressions are just not a hit for parents. They are to be enjoyed by kids and kids alone. And that’s okay, I guess. But Percy Jackson is not a sitcom, and the kids are actually pretty good at acting. But for an adventure series, it’s actually pretty dull.

Based on the popular series of tween books by Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell) is a 12-year-old boy, who has never met his father, lives with a verbally abusive step dad and struggles to make friends a school. Could it be the fact that his name is Percy? (His mother, a history buff, named him after the Greek literature hero, Perseus.) He self-admittedly says that he has a hard time concentrating at school. However, after he meets Grover Underwood (Aryan Simhadri), a boy with similar interests and problems with classmates, things go better for him. But lately, Percy has started to see things that aren’t there and experiences some strange activity in this life. When he mentions these things to his mother Sally (Virginia Kull) she become a bit cagey. Eventually, (spoiler alert) he learns that he is just one of many sons fathered by Poseidon, he is actually a demigod and Grover, a satyr, has been tasked with protecting him in the real world. It’s a lot to take in, but just as soon as he learns this, he is whisked away off to … and I kid you not … Camp Half-Blood filled with many other demigod kids. He even gets a camp shirt! Sounds pretty cool, but it too has its share of bullies and heroes to get used to.

Although the following information is not mentioned in the first two episodes of the new series, Percy finds that he will be sent to travel across the U.S.A. looking for Zeus’ master bolt and rescuing his mother, but not until he is done training. The more the series describes Percy’s connection with Greek mythology, the weirder the story gets. As Percy meets some of the other kids at camp (like Annabeth Chase (played by Leah Jeffries), there becomes more conversations about gods and whatnot. Whenever Percy asks a question about his fate as a demigod, he (and us) must endure listening to the many stories of the great heroes that came before him. Nobody but Percy is surprised by any of this. These kids are resilient.

Despite its relatively short run time, the series is slow moving and dull. There is a lot of exposition, which is needed I guess to better understand the story, but it gets boring and silly. Questionable CGI monsters do raise their ugly heads from time to time, but nobody really reacts to this. Nobody is terrified but all act a little over-confidently. Scobell himself is actually and good, likable and enjoyable as Percy. That does help, but everyone else though are a bit off to take as believeable. Fortunately, the story of Percy Jackson, isn’t too angsty, but there are a lot of standing around and talking. At least in the first two episodes.

It’s hard to say if the episodes get better down the road, but the bottom line here is, if your kid was a fan of the Percy Jackson books, they will probably enjoy the TV series as well. If you’re a fan of Greek mythology, maybe you will too.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is currently streaming on Disney+