Book to Movie Review: Percy Jackson

MOVIE TITLE: Percy Jackson and The Lighting Thief
BASED ON: The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riorden
SOME OF THE ACTORS: Pierce Brosden, Uma Thurman, Sean Bean
RELEASED: February 2010
MY REVIEW: If you look at this movie as a movie that was not adapted from a book. It is good. It has great action sequences, doesn't slow down, awesome special effects, and the banter between Percy, Anabeth, and Grover is great. I also predict we will be seeing more of these three kids because they are actually pretty good considering they've never done this. The guy who played Grover was hysterical and I predict he will be a great comedy actor someday. I also did like that Anabeth was kick butt.
However...this is based on a book and they made WAY too many changes for me not to notice and get annoyed by it. For starters, the three main characters don't even look like how they're described. They're all too old, Anabeth is supposed to be BLONDE (and not as kick butt but I'll ignore that because it actually isn't an annoyance), and Grover...yeah. They cut scenes, which is to be expected, but then they also added scenes. For instance as hysterical as Rosario Dawson was as Persephone, WAS NOT IN THE BOOK. Also the Underworld looked nothing like how it's described. Ares is cut out entirely and there is no mention of Kronos so it's made to look like Hades is the bad guy and Luke was acting on his own. The Gods aren't even costumed right, I really missed Poseiden's tropical shirt. I also didn't care for how they made it Zeus's fault that the god's don't talk to their kids because in the books it was just the god's nature.
Just a lot of stuff didn't jive and it was annoying because I really loved the first book and it didn't need all these changes because it was awesome enough on it's own. So long story short, if you ignore the books, it's a fun action movie. But if like me, you loved the first book...it's a disappointment though still a little fun.
MY RATING: Three out of Five demi-gods