I Am Number Four

[Beate]

Well we managed to get everyone in. We even got ourselves in after discovering that despite winning 2 x 2 tickets in my name, I wasn't on the guest list. And our plus ones had already gone in. But unperturbed, the lady simply added my name to the guest list and waved us through, ha.

And of course, this being the Apollo Piccadilly Circus, it did not start before 7pm. Even though we were told we all had to be seated by 6.30pm. So everyone rushed to the cinema and OH and I were actually the last ones to get in from our FMUK group! I mean even a_person was there before us! Amazing. Then they tried to sell us icecream for £3.60 a pot. Or was it £2.60? Anyway, totally overpriced.

Of course the reserved VIP seats stayed empty until the end. We got Alex Pettyfer and Teresa Palmer for about 1 minute on stage, then it got dark, the film credits came on and all of a sudden there was a commotion and the VIP seats filled up. How rude is that. I don't care who you are, you can be bloody punctual, seeing that the rest of us have waited an hour already!

Anyway. Sometimes I write the film reviews in my head during the film, as a sort of rolling commentary to myself. After half an hour, I was at "enjoyable nonsense." After an hour it changed to "when is this rubbish over?" At the end I had arrived at "utter Twilight crap". I mean you have the two leads (the pretty boy and Quinn from Glee) who are made for each other as they both look pretty and vacuous ("and where I come from, we love forever") and we have some shaky CGI (remember the werewolf attacks in Twilight?), plus of course a love rival. I expected a tense thriller - in no way did I appreciate this would be geared at the teen market with all that high school bullying they threw in for good measure. Oh, and we have a clever sidekick and a cute dog and an ending that absolutely cries out for a sequel. I bet there are five more books out there that I don't know about (after all, only Number 4 and 6 have found each other yet) and in any sequel, the pretty boy will be screamed at like R-Patz is at the moment. In that respect, we had a pretty restrained audience, thank God. But I nearly hurled when he launched into a speech at the end saying that "Earth is my home now". Do I really care?

5/10 and that includes points for the water and popcorn and for the adorable dog, who of course is not all he seems. Wasn't he a lizard at the beginning?

[valda]

yep as Beate said, its all Twilight Twaddle, but even worse. Corny dialogue, wooden acting lousy CGI, rubbish baddies etc. I didn't know whether to try and sleep or go to the loo as I was dying to go. Even at the end he did a 5 min speech setting up a sequel. In the queue at the ladies, it was full of girls talking about the film and the books so I reckon it may do well at the box office, nowhere near the business that Twilight gets, but maybe enough for a sequel.

Lovely to see everyone again, and I even had another couple of FMUK ers pointed out to me. 5/10 mostly for the toffee popcorn - which gave me a coughing fit, not during the film I hasten to add

[kevinknapman]

Alien comes to earth after his home planet is destroyed. Starts to discover he has special powers as a teenager. Realises his one weakness is kryptonite...oh sorry that's Superman. My mistake. I thought that started to sound familiar. Unsurprising really as this was written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (along with Buffy writer Marti Noxon) who have just regurgitated stuff from their scripts for the first couple of seasons of Smallville.
The first hour was some of the hoariest most cliched 'new kid comes to small town high school' stuff ever. Pretty dull and badly scripted (at one point after shooting a bad guy, a character actually says the line 'I play a lot of Xbox', seriously), before kicking slightly into gear with a messy effects heavy climax.
Alex Pettyfer was pretty wooden (none more so in an embarrassingly clunky voice over narration), a barely recognisable Kevin Durand was incredibly hammy as the main villain and Timothy Olyphant was wasted and way too good for this rubbish (he was a last minute replacement for The A-Team's Sharlto Copley). The remaining cast were incredibly bland.
By the end I couldn't frankly care less if they found the remaining numbers or not. I was just glad it was over. Also can someone explain why they had to be killed in order? They didn't seem to give an actual reason for that.
Impressively DJ Caruso has managed to make a film worse than Eagle Eye. Well done.

[Beate]

Oh crap I was right.

From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Number_Four
"The rights were purchased with the hope of attracting teenage fans of the Twilight saga films, and the potential of establishing a film franchise, with a least six more installments planned by the book's publisher."

[prettyxcool]

I agree with everyone here. Very familiar story, I thought, another Last of the Airbenders, acting bland, baddies that were just awful, rubbish special effects, and it was obvious, there will be a sequel. 5/10

[hdaniel82]

Oh well OH and I rather enjoyed it! Cool fight scenes :) But then I rather liked twilight even thought I am somewhat outside their target age bracket (I'm 28).

8/10

[soonforgotten]

This was a guilty pleasure for me. I know it's not great and I know why I shouldn't like it, but I found it to be fun and it maintained my interest. I did feel really dirty for enjoying it when I saw that Michael Bay produced it during the end credits, though. 7/10 from me.

[Rjeynes]

The password for this film is now working!

SKY Monday 21st February

password: SUPERNATURAL

[weliveandbreathewords]

grabbed a fair for this movie, definitely wasntgoing to p*y for it after seeing some reviews!

[zildjian]

I'm not going to lie, i got tickets from Sky then watched the trailer and almost regret it. I will go along for the hell of it though and hope for the best.

I've been lucky enough to see a fair few free films and not seen anything i would concider "terrible", but this looks a condidate for that title!