I Am Number Four is the latest movie trying to capitalise on the current ‘paranormal romance phenomenon’ in the teenage market. It feels a little like a feeble attempt by a large American corporate to copy something successful with low risk…
I Am Number Four is the latest movie trying to capitalise on the current ‘paranormal romance phenomenon’ in the teenage market. It is a Disney production and feels a little like a feeble attempt by a large American corporate to copy something successful to make a bit of profit with the lowest amount of risk.
The story is of ‘John Smith’ (Alex Pettyfer), a teenager trying to remain anonymous in the online age even though he has extraordinary powers….because he is an alien.
He travels from one place to another with his adult (also alien) guardian Henri, played by Timothy Oliphant (Go, Hitman, Gone in 60 seconds) as they try and stay one step ahead of the Mogadorians, another race of aliens.
The basic synopsis is that there were 10 alien babies sent to earth as their planet was being destroyed so that they could save the race. The Mogadorians are trying to destroy them but for some reason the aliens were numbered and the Mogadorians have to kill them in that order. The Mogadorians have already killed 1, 2 and 3 and now they are after Smith who is, as they title suggests, number four.
Above: John Smith has to keep moving to stay ahead of the Mogadorians – the worst dressed villains in the history of cinema.
The storyline sounds implausibly bad and I don’t think that the production made it any better. The Mogadorians are very reminiscent of the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings, but where the Nazgul had the benefit of Peter Jackson as director and Weta doing the special effects the Mogadorians have to make do with bad facemasks, black outifts and platform commando boots to make them look evil and alien. It really is awful.
Above: John Smith suddenly realised that his new found powers would get him invited on a lot of summer camping trips.
The romantic muse in the film is Dianna Agron who plays Sarah, a small town girl next door type who is stereotypically just waiting to finish high school so she can get out of town.
Above: The special effects in places were pretty spectacular. I liked the attention to detail of the police looking out of the windshield.
It is a teen movie, so you forgive some of the cheesiness of the romantic scenes – I am sure that if I was a 14 year old girl I would have been all over it – but when it is pointed out to John that his alien race only fall in love once and it is forever then it just jumps off the scale from bad teenage movie romance to ‘If Twilight can do it with vampires we can do it with aliens”.
All in all it is pretty entertaining. It wasn’t as suspenseful as I feared they were going to try and make it and it has some moments of good fun. The special effects are pretty good but some of the acting around them, especially the introduction of ‘Number 6’ doesn’t add to the enjoyment of the film (unless you are really enjoying mocking it). The support characters are predictably cliché (the jock, the nerd etc) but if you keep in mind it is a teenage movie you get past that pretty quickly.
Overall, I think that if you are going to go and see this movie go with some funny mates because you are definitely going to want to make some jokes while watching. Maybe just so you don’t annoy other cinema goers it might be worth waiting for it to be on DVD.
Unless, of course, you are a 14 year old girl, in which case ignore everything I wrote above because OMG this movie is amazing, and IMO Alex Pettyfer brings a third argument to the Team Jacob/Team Edward debate. LOL.
By Jeremy White, 24 February 2011.
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