Do I know that I Am Number Four has been out for a month? Yes. Do I know that nobody really cared much about it five minutes after they saw it—if they ever did—and that if there was ever a time to review it, the first weekend would have been the time? Yes. However, I missed my shot as I never got around to writing the review mostly because the movie really bored me and I couldn’t find much to say about it. But I did sit through it in theaters and thought that if I had to do that, I might as well get a review out of it eventually.
Since this is sort of an off week for the site (with only a handful of new items running before coming back next Monday) I figured what better place to dump it than here?
What Works: There’s not a whole lot that works in this sleepy movie but there’s an action babe alien (Teresa Palmer again, she’s on a role) whose first scene tearing apart and then blowing up a house briefly jolted me awake. She adds energy towards the last act too, which desperately needs it as the action scenes don’t feel all that exciting.
What Doesn’t Work: This movie straddles that awkward Twilight line of being half teen romance (it’s aliens instead of vampires this time) and half action film (bad aliens from some home planet are after the good alien who looks just like a regular teen…if a regular teen were 27 years old). Studio executives need to remember that Twilight, besides being a money machine, is also a very uneven and stilted franchise that still seems uncomfortable and gawky. So trying to replicate that awkward genre straddling in this film seems just as off. Also, the bullies say things bullies would never say and the depiction of the high school scenes feel unrealistic…the movie is an action movie at heart and probably should have gone that route since that’s what it’s more interested in.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Just because of where my tastes lie I think it would have been better to have the sidekicks (Teresa Palmer’s action babe and the dorky teen Earthling who befriends the lead alien) be the leads and have them in a romance instead. Seeing as how teen girls didn’t really show up for this movie, I don’t think you could have done worse to flip the gender roles on their head.
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