The new film "Wrath of the Titans," a sequel to the 2010 gods and monsters fantasy, "Clash of the Titans," opens in theaters this week. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly filed the following review.

  To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

Everything is on fire in "Wrath of the Titans". Early on, Sam Worthington, as the mighty Perseus, otherwise known as the dude who slayed the Kraken, takes on a two-headed, griffin-like beast that trashes a village with its incendiary breath. The spears and tridents that various warriors keep clutching glow like molten iron, and the film’s deluxe mythical monster is Kronos, father of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon, who after being overthrown and imprisoned has now risen up, in the form of a really, really big giant made entirely of volcanic rock and ash, his humongous arms throwing off fiery streams of lava.

For a movie that’s basically all special effects, "Wrath of the Titans" is certainly more fun, in its solemnly cheesy way, than "John Carter". A lot of the effects are actually pretty good, though that made me wonder: Why do the camerawork and editing have to be so jittery? In the old days, movies used to let us sit back and gaze at monsters. They don’t need to be photographed as if we were watching Saving Private Kraken. Of course, the other limitation of "Wrath of the Titans" is that the dialogue is mostly made of wet cardboard. What there is of it consists of actors like Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Edgar Ramirez, as the evil Aries, staring at each other and saying things like “You’re my brother and you betrayed me!” or “You’re my son and you betrayed me!” We get it: The gods are losing their power, there’s a whole lot of betrayal, and this means, somehow, that the world is about to end.

Maybe it’s just my imagination, but Sam Worthington seems to be getting slightly less stiff as an actor. He now smiles occasionally, and he’s at least risen to the soulful inexpressiveness of the young Ryan O’Neal. He’s really the perfect actor for a movie like "Wrath of the Titans", which is basically "Gladiator" crossed with Lord of the Rinky-Dink crossed with a special effects demo reel. That’s because he never threatens to overshadow all that fire.