The Twilight Saga's incredible success spurred every studio in Hollywood to try and scrape together a supernatural romance geared toward preteen girls (and weird, 40-something women). Sony, via their Screen Gems label, picked up the rights to The Mortal Instruments series. This seemed like a wise investment. In addition to vampires and werewolves, The Mortal Instruments adds angels and demons. Instead of a love triangle, The Mortal Instruments has a four way romance (a love square? love rhombus?). Instead of Twilight's pre-marital abstinence, The Mortal Instruments has incest. The final result of this Twilight one-upmanship is an extremely bizarre and surprisingly enjoyable movie.
The plot of this crazy Twilight meets Underworld by way of Interview with the Vampire movie is that the world is overrun by demons (who disguise themselves to look like people). A group of demon killers known as Shadowhunters (who are half-angel and half-human and all neck tattoos) have been keeping them at bay. A teen girl named Clary begins drawing a strange symbol over and over again. Turns out her mother was a Shadowhunter who is in hiding because she alone knows the location of the Mortal Cup, one of the Mortal Instruments. Clary inadvertently leads the evil Shadowhunters to her mother and they take her hostage (despite being in a self-imposed, potion-induced coma). Clary, however, is rescued by small band of teen Shadowhunters. She and her best friend, Simon, must find Clary's mother, discover the location of the Mortal Cup, and stop the ultimate evil Shadowhunter from opening Hell on earth in downtown New York City all while coping with her new feelings toward the young Shadowhunter, Jace, and learning to be a Shadowhunter herself (because Shadowhunting is genetic). I left out so much plot and detail that it would blow your mind. The Mortal Instruments is a very dense movie (in more ways than one).
This has been a good week for reviews structured as lists of issues (good or bad) that I had with the movie. So, let's keep that going here:
1) The Mortal Instruments tries way too hard to be clever. Everyone throws around pithy one-liners but those one-liners are universally groaners. In fact, most of Clary's one-liners are unnecessarily rude. There is plenty to laugh at in The Mortal Instruments but none of it is intentional.
2) The "mythology" or "world building" or whatever is going on in the world of this movie is overly complicated. Pages and pages of exposition may work in the books, but a movie cannot have characters continuously making speeches explaining what's going on.
3) Despite the terrible dialogue and bizarre plot, most of the actors turn in fairly strong performances. Lily Collins is really good. Jamie Campbell Bower juggles moody posing and action scenes well (although his best scene is when he throws a temper tantrum over being refused sex). Jared Harris is acting like he's in a grand drama. It's like he doesn't realize what kind of movie he's in. But Jonathan Rhys Meyers does, and he hams up his every scene gloriously. Even the lesser known, supporting actors are good. They all make the movie easier to accept.
4) There are some scenes with truly great horror imagery. I'm not sure if this is the doing of the director, Harald Zwart, whose filmography is full of awful movies. The Mortal Instruments is photographed by Geir Hartly Andreassen who has worked on several rather beautiful films. It doesn't really matter who is responsible. It just added nicely to the supernatural aspect of the film.
5) Some of the action scenes are really good, especially the big fight in the vampire hotel. The action may be slightly over-edited, but it's all shot with enough distance and a steady camera. You can actually see what's going on! And you want to too. The staging is fun. Lots of swords and flips and interesting use of the surroundings.
6) This movie has strong gay characters! They're not comic relief and they are taken seriously and treated as equal members of their groups. One of them is a super powerful warlock who kinda saves the day. This is not something I expect to see in mainstream movies, let alone a Twilight knockoff. I hope that we see more of this in the coming years.
7) This one is sorta nitpicky but it drove me crazy. They use a tarot deck several times in the movie, but it's only comprised of about 14 cards. There's more than 14 cards in a tarot deck. There are 78 cards in a tarot deck!
8) The Shadowhunters, whose entire purpose is to fight demons, are terrible at fighting demons. They fight vampires extremely well. One Shadowhunter can kill dozens of vampires with relative ease, but it takes three Shadowhunters to fight off, and ultimately lose to, one demon. Simon, the nerdy best friend who is not a Shadowhunter, manages to subdue a demon with nothing but a shovel.
9) If you're looking to capture the chic style of your favorite The Mortal Instruments character, go check out the Mega Sale going on at Rue 21! It's a really awkward bit of product placement, but I can appreciate any clothing store that allows a werewolf to beat a demon to death with one of its mannequins on screen.
10) They have a Stargate! But even cooler than that is how they film it. They take a page from the films of Jean Cocteau and built a pool that looks like the portal. The actors then jump in the pool. When the image is shown upright, it results in real splashes that defy gravity. The rules of the portal make absolutely no sense but the filming of it is great.
11) The make-out scene in the greenhouse is one of the funniest things I've seen all year. Most of the unintentional humor in The Mortal Instruments comes from how seriously the filmmakers take the utterly ridiculous subject matter and script. After some laughable flirtations and near kisses (on a spiral staircase surrounded by flowers), Clary and Jace finally give the audience the kiss we all knew was coming... and then the sprinkler system turns on for no reason as the music swells romantically. Jace apologizes for the sprinklers and they leave. It's awesomely dumb!
12) Incest. It's pseudo-incest, but it totally happens. You will feel icky.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is not a great or even a very good movie, but it's better than most of the junk marketed toward teenage girls. When it is good, it's totally watchable; when it's bad, it's even better. I give this movie a recommendation for teen girls and for those who get a kick out of unintentional comedy.
5.5 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment