How sad is this?

As Good As It Gets

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

As a fantasy adventure this succeeds on every level, it has likeable heroes, exotic locations and imaginative monsters! The Argonauts are a colorful crew of heroes which makes it instantly appealing. Then you add the stop-motion wizardry by Harryhausen and what you get is an epic adventure that is still as enjoyable as the day it was released!

There aren't many movies that span even one generation as representing good entertainment. Those that do rarely fall into the category of sword-and-sandal, but "Jason" was one of them.Advanced CGI now makes Harryhausen work look primitive so today's kids probably wouldn't be impressed. Yet this movie that stunned me as a 10 year old still stunned my own sons 25 years after it's release. It required a significant piece of work to do that.There are plenty of comments regarding the quality of the animation so I won't add to that. I will note that a young person who has any interest in the history and development of film special effects needs to rank this one with "King Kong" and take a look. They won't be sorry.

Giant iron men, sea monsters with heads of men but tails of fish, harpies attacking blind men, hydras whose teeth turn into fighting skeletons and all sorts of other dangers turn what was commonly referred to as the matinée into a fantasy masterpiece which is considered Ray Harryhausen's triumph by many.Todd Armstrong is Jason, a Greek prince who can only reclaim his throne by locating the golden fleece. Of course, there are mortals who don't want him to succeed and it appears that chief God Zeus doesn't want him to succeed either. The only one who seems to be on his side is the head Goddess Hera, Zeus's wife, and here, she is presented as sympathetic unlike other portrayals.This is the epitome of the fast moving special effects spectacular that was perfected by the talents of Lucas and Spielberg. Stop motion special effects dominate here and are more charming and less headache inducing than today's computer generated effects. Every mythological creature who appears offer both thrills and frights, although students of Greek mythology will nit- pick unnecessarily. I day get off your high Pegasus and enjoy it for the ingenuity that went behind it.

Watching Jason and the Argonauts sold me on stop-motion monster films over CGI. The monsters and giant figures are far more realistic and cool looking this way. I mean honestly Talos and The Dragon are the reasons why people watch these movies. Otherwise the story was strong but I felt the gods played a part of it too much. Todd Armstrong was fantastic as Jason and the surrounding Argonauts were all great. My issue is how the movie started and how it ended. The beginning sub-plot was never mentioned again throughout the movie and left a lot of questions unaddressed. The end of the film rushed the female lead and could have been written much better in my opinion. Still a good movie to watch with the family and a movie to introduce young kids to if you want them to be a monster/horror film fan.