Plot Summary
The Good
The Bad
Judgment
Closing
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Introduction
I Am Number Four is a movie that rightfully spelled the end of its franchise.
Now, it's not that the movie is outright bad. No. Rather, it's because it doesn't play enough to its own strengths. One of the common criticisms of the flick is that it's a mash-up of a number of other genres (thriller, sci-fi, action, romance, teen), and that criticism definitely holds up.
In fact, just like the new kid in school (or our hero in the movie's case) who tries to hide his quirks in order to fit in, this movie puts far too much effort into being hot genres and mimicking popular movies of its time that it completely loses sight of just what it actually is and turns out as unoriginal and somewhat convoluted.
However, it still has something, and that something is slightly remarkable.
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Plot Summary
A young man of high school age (John, played by Alex Pettyfer) is hiding a secret. For he's not really human at all, but some kind of alien refugee. And now, the alien species that destroyed his home planet and his people (the Mogadorians) is in hot pursuit, and he's revealed as his peoples' last hope (and member, at least at the movie's beginning).
Although John tries to fit in as a regular human teen and remain invisible, he's always doing something out of the ordinary that forces him and his guardian Henri (Timothy Olyphant) to move from place to place.
The movie follows John and Henri in their newest locale: Paradise, Ohio. John falls in love with a local girl (Sarah, played by Dianna Agron), there's a bit of romance, the Mogadorians find him, someone close to him is killed, and John and the small group that he's gathered by the movie's end successfully face off against the Mogadorian band that's currently after him.
With the immediate threat of the Mogadorians dealt with, and on the advice of Henri, John and the mysterious Six (Teresa Palmer) set out to find the rest of the survivors from their planet (since, apparently, there are actually four more).
What exactly happens when all six of John's species come together is left ambiguous, but it's said to be good, and it's the stuff of sequels. Sequels that will probably never be.
So, given its fairly bland plot, what's the good of this movie?
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The Good
In spite of the standard storyline, the movie itself - the way it tells the story, the writing at points, and the sci-fi elements - has a kind of "pulp appeal." Just as was the case with John Carter, it has a kind of 90s JRPG feel to it. There's some imagination at work in the details and the aliens, though these seem to have been toned down since the movie is, after all, trying to be almost all genres to all people.
Nonetheless, the movie's action is consistently impressive; the action sequences are tight and short. This movie's fight choreography is excellent, and in it all of the attacks and counters and blocks look like they're being thrown for real. So the animators definitely need to be congratulated on this count.
Characters are not this movie's strong point, but one character stands out: Sarah.
She's the token love interest, but with a twist. Rather than being some humdrum local girl, the quarterback's babe, she's the quarterback's ex-girlfriend. However, she's not torn up about it and trying to force herself on John as some sort of replacement.
Instead, she's entirely over the quarterback, and openly dreams of what the world holds for her. She's a photographer and runs a blog that's so popular locally that everyone seems to know her name. The fact that she's totally cool with John just spontaneously looking through her private scrapbook is definitely questionable, but otherwise, she's a gem amongst coal.
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The Bad
The rest of the movie's characters, however, are much less undeveloped.
The main is just a handsome guy with chiseled abs that loves to display these for the camera time and again.
The quarterback is your standard high school jock, though, out of nowhere, he apparently still has feelings for Sarah.
The nerd character is, well, a nerd.
And Six is just an aimless blonde bad-ass who blows shit up and uses big guns while speaking with an English accent.
Characters are not the movie's strength.
The CGI used for the monsters in the movie is also lacking. Rather than being clear and crisp, its dark and murky. This works from an atmosphere point of view, and is consistent with the dark tone of the scenes in which these creatures show up, but even then crisper textures would make them look all the more real.
But where most of the characters are good attempts, the animation is hit and miss (remember those fight scenes!), and the plot itself is unoriginal, the acting is where this film takes its biggest spill.
The only character on screen that's acted well is Henri, John's guardian.
John himself is too emotionless at the wrong times (in the scene where he and Sarah first kiss he looks more dumbfounded than impassioned even though they both go in for the kiss at the same time); the quarterback plays the jock well, but clumsily brings in emotions; and Sarah, though seemingly eager for the romance and her photography, plays the rest of her role lukewarmly.
The epitome of this off acting, though, is delivered by John when he so wittily replies to Six's exhortation to "I just saved your ass" with "you should be watching your own ass" delivered in a strange teenage deadpan:
I Am Number Four Clip by the_penmin
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Judgment
Now, this movie does have the same sort of "pulp appeal" that John Carter had, and the idea of a teenage love interest whose fairly self-sufficient and actually matures and becomes stronger after a breakup rather than more and more obsessive (*cough* Bella Swan *cough*) are both great things.
But what sets this movie far apart from the unfortunately under-viewed John Carter is that the bulk of I am Number Four falls flat.
The movie's plot is derivative, the acting lame, the CGI not quite crisp enough. Nonetheless, this is the sort of movie that you might want to have playing while you're doing a lengthy, quasi-monotonous task, like baking bread or a making a bulk batch of cookies.
Plus, the movie is based on a co-authored book. I'm less intrigued than curious, but I would still give it a flip through, and so a little bit of the "Green Lantern Effect" is at work here as well.
So, Freya, raise this one up, but feel free to do so whenever you're next in the vicinity.
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Closing
Next week check back here for the first part in the next four part series on a major issue, an article on some of the newest news, and the hunt for the good in the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans
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