A troubled high school student learns he is the lost son of Poseidon when, during a field trip to the natural history museum, his substitute teacher suddenly sprouts wings and tries to chew his face off. He's then whisked away to a summer camp for demigods, crash-coursed on current events atop Mount Olympus, mired in a messy dispute between deities and sent on a whiplash road trip with two friends.

A teenaged _Harry Potter_ for Greek mythology buffs, in other words, only I can't tell which age range it's intended for. The main characters' maturity levels, their frequent romantic teases and the plot's dusty historical influences seem to indicate it's geared for early teens, but the simplistic plot and colorless dialogue gives the impression it's aimed at a much younger audience. Either way, it's a misfire. The supporting cast is loaded and Chris Columbus is on-board as both producer and director, so clearly the studio had every intention of mining this as the next big multi-film adaptation, but the effects stink, the story is dreary and there's no sparkle between the core players. Even the author of the source novels, Rick Riordan, has publicly disavowed it. Pretty tough to argue with that.