Agreeable cheese. This update of the 1981 camp classic adds plenty of CGI yet manages to keep the original’s hammy charm. Once again Perseus (Sam Worthington, atoning for Harry Hamlin’s laughable curls by sporting a crew cut) battles a menagerie of beasties in order to close the rift between prideful people and needy gods (including Liam Neeson as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as Hades, both in operatic form). Some of the hokey effects in Clash of the Titans are more charming (the giant scorpions have the jerky movement of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion work in the first film) than others (a lifeless Medusa seems lifted from a 1990s video game). Yet by the time the crazy, King Kong-inspired climax rolls around – in which Perseus tries to save a princess who is being sacrificed to the gargantuan sea monster known as the Kraken – creature-feature fans will have had their wild imaginations sated.
