After a battle on Mount Olympus, the Greek God Zeus dispersed the spirits of the remaining gods into the bodies of regular humans to serve as vessels. Once Aphrodite (Elizabeth Bennet) and Ares (Darren Miller) got a hold of Zeus’s staff, the fate of humanity rests in the arms of a clumsy band geek named Athena (Eleni Romanias).
Eleni Romanias stars, writes, and directs the film adaption of her graphic novel which plays out more like an angsty young adult fiction novel forced onto the screen, rather than an actual film. It’s slow- even for its short run-time. It lacks any reinvention of the tired and dry Greek mythology films we’ve seen countless times throughout the early 2010s, outside of its lead character, a quirky girl who feels invisible in high school. This film had the bare bones of something that could flip the genre into something progressive and reformative, but instead, it settles for cheap puns and uninspired fight scenes.
When the ball finally does begin to roll, you can’t help but laugh at the charming, handsome student teacher turned god Diomedes (Ryan Ott) falling hopelessly in love with Athena despite the rest of the world deeming her undesirable. There’s nothing wrong with the handsome guy falling for the nerdy girl, but when it feels like he’s already under Aphrodite’s power as he falls for Athena, the entire process feels lazy.
“…the fate of humanity rests in the arms of a clumsy band geek named Athena.”
Aphrodite and Ares are no better, as they clumsily enter in and out of the plot and pose as basically temporary villains in the tattered love story that’s being shoved down your throat. They lack motivation and conviction, and they just seem like their only goal is to destroy the world just because they can.
To make matters worse, the final battle that the film sets up, when it’s not forcing a love story down your throat, comes and goes in just a matter of minutes with every action being so utterly predictable, you might as well have cut to black before it even began. Taking the choreography out of the picture, even as slow as it was, the entire battle just lacked substance and meaning, when you’re not convinced of the gravity of the circumstance. On a more positive note, the score was a delight, and lifted some of the cheesier scenes into the more dramatic territory.
I can’t, in good consciousness, recommend anyone to waste sixty plus minutes watching this film, so I’d much rather you take a trip to a nice Greek mythology exhibit and read about something a little less drab.
Greek Goddess (2018) Directed by Eleni Romanias. Written by Eleni Romanias. Starring Eleni Romanias, Ryan Ott, Salvatore Ignozzi, Santino Tomasetti.
3 out of 10
