Variety‘s Brian Lowry is calling the 3D Clash of the Titans “pretty flat,” claiming that the “technical upgrade doesn’t improve the clunky mythological underpinnings. Result feels mostly like a very expensive kids’ pic.

Ray Harryhausen‘s stop-motion work in the original 1981 Clash of the Titans “is surely dated from a technical standpoint compared with the magic CGI can conjure; still, this Titans reboot merely demonstrates that building a more elaborate mousetrap doesn’t necessarily produce a more entertaining one.

Action- and spectacle-wise “everything is literally bigger but not necessarily better [here], including the gigantic Kraken, which now resembles Return of the Jedi‘s Rancor monster but remains every bit as anticlimactic as it was three decades ago.

“The effects are too frequently muddied by the pace at which they flash by, limiting opportunities to appreciate the combined animatronic, computer-generated and motion-capture visuals. The most satisfying creative element, actually, is Ramin Djawadi‘s operatic score.”