I Am Number Four

steven harris may will think that I Am Number Four is a big pile of Number 2 but I couldn't possibly comment...

What a shame this one wasn’t about Number Two. So many jokes about number twos. There sort of is one towards the end when Number Six turns up and she gets asked “Are you a number too?” but by then I’m past caring. By then I’ve realised that this is a crap, should have been made for TV sort of movie that rapes the source material of the books it is based on and assumes that the intrusion of eardrum-damagingly loud incidental music and contemporary popular songs makes this more exciting, relevant or watchable.

Remember Roswell? Roswell was mostly worth it because it had no ambitions above its station. It knew what it was, a fair to middling TV series that would have been laboured and lame on the big screen. If a television company had decided to pick up this franchise and make a series (or nine) out of it then it could have been a decent enough distraction while we all waited for X-Files to return or for David Lynch to change his mind about reviving Twin Peaks then change his mind again about being involved just as it was given the green light.

Weird science fiction shit happens. Dull science fiction shit. Not deep and meaningful science fiction shit that offers something in the way of insight into the human condition, just explosions and angry teenagers and ugly villains who give Maori facial art a bad name, and fucking awful dialogue.

And a dog. Nice to have a shape-shifting dog in some shit science fiction film at least. I think he’s quite gay for Number Four which is sweet but inter species relationships rarely work out well.

I can’t help thinking that if Will Smith had been involved in this then it could have been better. He is, after all, the king of movies that begin with the personal pronoun ‘I’. I Am Legend. I Robot. I Ndependence Day. I Fresh Prince was good too but that’s on the television. Which is where I Am A Double Turd ought to have been. I may have already indicated this opinion. And we all know that my opinions are better than yours, better than those of Hollywood executives and better than the opinions of slugs.

Trying to find something really positive to say about the film. Struggling. Number Four’s guardian is an actor called Timothy Olyphant. He was the bad guy in Die Hard 4 and is much less hammy here. And his surname is Olyphant which makes me think simultaneously of Winnie The Pooh and of Lord of The Rings. He has no tusks though and it’s Heffalumps in Winnie the Pooh so I’m just kidding myself as well as trying pad this review out to something like five hundred words. Because five hundred is a decent enough number and quite an achievement when you didn’t really like the film but didn’t hate it enough to vomit aggression and bile all over the screen as you typed. (505)

steven harris is adverse to putting his name in capitals because names aren't that important. Also, lower case is sexy. steven writes all sorts of stuff including fiction, poetry, songs, opinion pieces and shopping lists. He does not write on lavatory doors any more. his blog has writing in it and can be located at www.theplanetharris.wordpress.com He lives in Devon with an imaginary cat called Kafka.

Follow him on Twitter as @theplanetharris

Image from Amazon