Mortal Instruments, City of Bones: MOVIE Review

Because I was forced to read the book by my friend Jacey, because it's part of her fandom (I'm just going to go ahead and say "Malec for life!" because if I don't I really won't be getting the whole "Jacey" thing across), and it..... isn't my favourite book I've ever read. I'll get to the books, maybe possibly if I feel like it.

But the movie. 

Considering the meh-ness of the source material, it was actually quite impressive. (Even Jacey admits the first book was "meh"). 

But before I get started, the main actress in the movie was totally ringing a bell with me through the whole thing and I couldn't figure out why until I finally realized that she looked exactly like Eliza Dushku, who played Faith on Buffy. Honestly, at first I thought it was her, until I remembered that Eliza Dushku could barely pull off playing a teenager in 1999, let alone now. So then I figured that they were probably related, it was a family thing. Show business is like that, so it made sense to me. Her last name was probably Dushku. Until I was informed by Jacey that her name is Lily Collins. Which really, just..... wha-huh?

Left, Lily Collins, right, Eliza Dushku. There is no way I am the only one seeing this. Right? RIGHT?!

But anyway. Not that that matters.

A brief summary:

Clary is totally a normal teenage girl with her normal teenage (geeky) friend, until one night at a club she witnesses a murder by people that no one else could see. One of these people, Jace, tracks her down, and guess what, he happens to be an (apparently) gorgeous teenage boy so whoa, big surprise, sparkage. (Holy predictable Batman but anyways). And then suddenly her mom is vanished and she gets attacked by a demon and before you know it, she (and her incredibly loyal geeky friend) are sucked into the world of the SHADOWHUNTERS. They're demon hunters. And then there's like a rogue Shadowhunter who took her mom and he's a bad guy and a bunch of stuff happens.

Yeah.

So, okay, the source material? Underwhelming.

The movie? Actually quite enjoyable.

I just have this to say, though: Jace is supposed to be friggin' gorgeous, and they get THIS guy to play him?

Am I the only one that thinks he's kinda ugly? Anyone? No? Fine. 

So anyways, the movie:

Quite well done. I dunno, it's hard to do this without comparing it to the book. The actress who played Clary, our Eliza Dushku lookalike, did a VERY good job with portraying Clary, and the guy who played Simon (A.K.A. the geeky friend) freakin' NAILED it. All the acting was very good, now that I think about it. I did have a problem with Jace - he's supposed to be very arrogant and non-chalant about, well, everything, and in this movie he treated everything like it was deadly serious. But besides that....

Also, they switched the plot around, like, a lot. It wasn't a bad thing, and probably worked better that way, I just thought I'd mention it.

The pacing was very good. In movies like the Hunger Games, where nothing ever happens until twenty minutes into the movie, and then another half hour until the Games actually start? Pacing is a problem. This movie did not have that problem. Everything moved at a good pace, not so slow that we were bored, not so fast we didn't know what was going on. It was good.

Everything was set up perfectly in this movie, also. There was nothing that came around that felt kinda cheap, everything was explained and made sense and was earned. Which, not gonna lie, I thought was going to be kind of a problem.

There was one thing that bothered me especially:

Valentine. A.K.A evil bad guy.

He's supposed to be crazy, no doubt, but a sophisticated kind of crazy. Sort of.... Hannibal Lectar-esque, but less creepy. He's supposed to seem reasonable, charismatic, intelligent, always going for "I've got the good of the world at heart" kinda thing going. The kind of guy who kills people, but is able to justify it and no one can argue with him without feeling wrong. All this, but with serious anger management issues, basically, is what Valentine is supposed to be like. Appearing to be a charismatic, intelligent humanitarian, when in actuality he's basically a cold-blooded, sadistic, racist murderer. I loved that when I was reading the books. He was such a fascinating character.

But there's definitely a line between the crazies. There's sophisticated crazy, like I just described, and then there's just psychotic, insane, I-will-murder-six-people-by-myself-with-my-bare-hands-if-you-don't-obey-me crazy. And, disappointingly, in this movie Valentine crossed that line.

Between trying to force Clary to drink his own blood, slamming heads into tables with scary force multiple times and nearly stabbing (what would seem) his own son, I just think they kinda missed the point of Valentine. He's supposed to be persuasive. That's where half the suspense from the original story came from. They missed that. And that disappoints me, because, truthfully, I liked the character of Valentine more than I liked Clary or Jace.

And I'm not even going to talk about that horrifically cheesy greenhouse scene.

But the thing about the movie is, surprisingly for me, the emotions were conveyed perfectly. It will scare you when its purpose is to be scary. It will make you laugh when its purpose is to be funny. That was extremely well done (especially with the scary part) so kudos to them for that.

So, yeah, it was enjoyable and about a billion times more exciting than (the book) I expected. I wouldn't necessarily watch it again anytime soon, but it's a fun experience while you're watching it.

3.5/5 stars.