I Am Number Four

I Am Number Four
Directed by: D.J. Caruso
Cast: Alex Pettyfer as John
Timothy Olyphant as Henri
Dianna Agron as Sarah

Rated PG-13

*The following may contain spoilers*

Inspiration comes from everywhere and everything. Lately, Hollywood has been drawing upon popular books and book series to inspire the theater line up. It's a good idea, in theory. Some book-turned-movies do pretty well and that tells the Hollywood executives to do more (thank you, Harry Potter).

Unfortunately, there are two problems with this plan for originality: 1) the movie will never be as good as the book so the fans will never be completely satisfied and 2) books aren't always original either.

I Am Number Four was a new-ish twist on a classic tale. It tells the story of a young man with a set of unique abilities who must hide in society and act like a normal teenager. His name is Clark, er, uh, I mean, John.

Yes, essentially, Number Four is a movie version of Smallville. John is an alien from a distant planet sent to Earth to hide from the enemies that destroyed his home. The new-ish part comes in when we find out that there are nine of these aliens scattered across the planet, hiding from their mutual enemy, an alien race called the Mogans (or something). The bad news is, the Mogans have found the kid-aliens on earth and are picking them off, one-by-one. Three are already dead and John is next. He is Number Four. All the commercials make sense now, don't they?

Like I said, Number Four is basically a retelling of Superman's childhood, if Superman's childhood was produced by Michael Bay. There's a romance, the discovering of superpowers and some major explosions and wicked cool action scenes. Overall, it was actually pretty good.

What I Liked:
Number Four is nothing you haven't seen before and based on the commercials you've probably seen (this thing has a huge ad budget), you're probably not really interested. But, the thing that sets Number Four apart isn't in the originality of the story but how they tell it.

I was always bored by Superman. He was too cliche, too invincible and the fact that every villain he faced always had a box full of the one thing that could hurt seemed a bit too unrealistic, even for a comic book. Number Four is different. Yes, John has some pretty sweet powers, but he's not invincible. In fact, there are several times where he almost gets his butt handed to him in a fight and has to be rescued.

Not only that, John has to deal with falling in love and pursuing the girl. He has to handle the bullies in school without his powers and goes through "alien puberty" as his powers come in (painful changes, lots of sweating and he eventually becomes more athletic).

John is human. That's what sets this movie apart. He deals with human issues first and uses his powers second. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of action sequences and explosions but it's the subtle humanistic traits that John has that make him a great hero.

I also liked the pacing of Number Four. The beginning was heavily packed with information and might have seemed drawn out to some, but I feel that a lot of movies miss their chance to set up the story properly and Number Four set it up perfectly. It helped that the audience learned about John's powers as he did, instead of everything being in the narrative. It gave the film a more natural feel.

Number Four also did a pretty good job of keeping the audience interested. A little of that is the pacing and story, but the acting throughout helped the whole experience come together. In the end, I was rooting for John a lot more than I expected to be, especially since the ending was obvious. SPOILER: He wins.

What I Didn't Like:
Going back to the previously mentioned pacing, the ending seemed a little rushed. They fought the bad guys and then the next scene cuts to them preparing to leave. I just would have liked a little bit more down time for John and the newly entered Number 6 to maybe discuss their next move instead of just kind of saying, "Okay, moving on."

One of my biggest complaints was the language. It was pretty rough and pretty frequent with multiple and repeated uses of the s-word and one or two uses of inappropriate slang for human anatomy.

My only other issue was the CGI (Computer Generated Images, for those of you who aren't nerds). It was varied, ranging from okay to really bad throughout the movie. The okay instances came whenever John fired up his Iron Man-like photon/Force-powered hands. The glowing orb of light looked more like he had a hole in his palms. The really bad occurred whenever the two giant alien-dinosaur beasts arrived (randomly) and had a two-minute fight scene in the high-school shower room. It's always risky to have a scene containing only CGI images in a real-world setting, especially if it's not done correctly but it's Michael Bay and since when has he listened to the rules of CGI?

The answer to that would be: NEVER

Besides those little hiccups, the rest is pretty standard. There are a couple people that get thrown into walls and trees, blood is shown a few times, there's a party with red solo cups, though its never clear what's in them and there are two long kisses with the love interest.

Final Thoughts:
Overall, I left the theater feeling pretty happy with the film (I also only paid $2.50 for it, so take that into consideration). Yes, its an old story, but there's only so much you can do before some ideas begin to get reused and Number Four had just enough originality and "oomph" in the storytelling to keep it enjoyable.

When You Should See It: Dollar Theater or DVD.
It's good, but not $7.50 good.

Personal Rating: 6 of 10
Plot: 5 of 10
Sexuality/Sensuality: 0.5 of 10
Spiritual Aspects: 1 of 10 (it's a stretch, but I'm sure someone could piece something together.)
Drugs/Alcohol: 0.5 of 10 (and even that's unclear.)