Jason and the Argonauts - supposedly - Bloody awful movie review

[Sa'ar Chasm]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]The movie's awful, not the review.

I just caught Part II of the made-for-TV miniseries Jason and the Argonauts. I wish I hadn't.

First off, they butchered the storyline (Nan, you may want to skip this bit.) Nobody in their right might should want to watch this movie, so I'm not too concerned with spoilers. Everybody dies in the wrong place: Hercules (what?!) , the Colchian king Aertes, his son, a couple of nameless Argonauts...

Then we have the special effects. As part of his heroic task, Jason much harness a legendary feisty bull, sow a field with dragon's teeth and then fight the skeletal warriors that rise fropm the ground. So far, so good. The bull is the size of an elephant entirely mechanical. To 'tame' it, Jason rides it as it jiggles back and forth in a travesty of CGI. It's like a Saturday night at a cowboy bar. I think stop-motion would have looked better. The skeletal warriors look more like skeletal trees, and Jason defeats them by leaping around *completely* out of sync with the motions of the sword swings. In a rather predictable slapstick sequence, the skeletrees smash each other to pieces. I could have sword he was supposed to sow dissent among them - or was that the other time in Greek mythology with skeletal warriors springing from dragon's teeth?

The acting is sub-par. Maybe I've been spoiled by all the Shakespearean actors who've appeared int Trek and B5, but nobody in this movie seems to be able to emote. Hearing the Colchian prince say "they're in cahoots!" didn't help. Jolelene "T'Pol" Blalock stars as Medea. At first I didn't recognise her out of a catsuit. Medea had about as much emotional range as T'Pol does.

After they retrieved the Fleece from the dinosaur - sorry, one-headed hydra - they went back to the ship. While rowing away, Medea somehow "felt" her father's death at the hands of his court (?). Must be a Vulcan mind-meld or something. I distinctly recall her killing her brother, chopping him into bits, and then throwing the bits over the stern so her father's pursuing warfleet would have to stop and pick them up for the funeral. Instead, she spitted him on a lance while he was trying to kill Jason six scenes ago.

Did I mention that Zeus leans down out of the clouds, scoops up a handful of seawater, and gargles it? That Eros looked more like the Human Torch? That a falling ropes accelerates faster than a falling human body? Oy...

In short, don't see this movie unless you're a masochist.[/colorost_uid0]