I Am Number Four (2011)

I have complained many times about the films which pretend to capture the same childish spirit from Harry Potter. However, the flood of Harry Potter imitators seems to have diminished in recent months. The reason? The success of the Twilight saga provoked a "change of direction" from the Hollywood executives, and instead of exploring variations of "magic boys save the world", they are now desperately searching for new instances of "forbidden romances between teenagers with supernatural powers". For better or for worse, I Am Number Four belongs to this nascent sub-genus, and I found it to be boring and lacking of any emotion and originality.

I Am Number Four covers a well-known ground from the fantastic cinema as well as from the juvenile romance one. And I am not precisely against of that; director D.J. Caruso previously made two unoriginal but dynamic and entertaining movies (Disturbia and Eagle Eye), something which gave me hopes of finding some redeemable elements in I Am Number Four. Unfortunately, very few things worked in this movie (at least in my personal experience), because I could never get interested in the characters or in their forced romance, and much less in the horribly trite sci-fi concepts with which it pretends to adorn its tiring narrative.

To start with...Mogadorians? Was that the best name which came to mind to author Pittacus Lore (in fact a pseudonym of Jobie Hughes and James Frey) for the villains of the book on which this movie was based? Sure, the name by itself does not have too much importance, but it is a good example of the creativity level from the whole film. The heroes are handsome young people who look like models; the villains are bald and pale, with piranha teeth, and they suffer from the "talkative villain syndrome", revealing their plans or talking more than they should when they could easily exterminate the heroes.

One of the few things I liked in I Am Number Four is Teresa Palmer's energetic performance. In fact, I think the film would have been much more entertaining with her in the leading role, instead of the insipid couple of Alex Pettyfer and Dianna Agron. However, I cannot recommend this film, because I found it to be bland, repetitive and tedious.