I Am Number Four

The film "I Am Number Four" has more than a whiff of number two about it, but this bombastic combination of "Twilight" romance, "Transformers" destruction and decibel levels may very well connect with its target PG-13 audience.

It's a little of everything. And it's sold by weight and volume.

Like the young-adult book whence it came, it hammers together a lonely-teen fantasy involving interplanetary monsters, sociopathic small-town bullies and a variety of circumstances preventing the fated sweethearts -- one human, one with beams of light coming out of his hands -- from getting too familiar.

Just when even the most rabid "Twilight" fanatics were starting to think "Are these two ever gonna do it?" along comes "I Am Number Four," the first screen adaptation of a series of books known as "The Lorien Legacies," to keep the supercharged celibacy going.

Director D.J. Caruso's film takes place in a burg halfway, in spirit, between Superman's Smallville and the good vampires of Forks, Wash.

On the run from vicious Mogadorians who wiped out their beloved planet of Lorien, two surviving Loriens have taken the form of a teenage boy and his "father," the new guys in town. Alex Pettyfer plays the student, John Smith. Timothy Olyphant is his guardian and protector, Henri. If "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" had tons and tons of computer-generated effects, it would be "I Am Number Four."

The object for the humanoid aliens is to stay alive, keep moving and never mix too closely with the earthlings who -- silly things -- don't realize a takeover of their planet is Job One for the Mogadorians.

In a nasty prologue set somewhere in the African jungle, two other Loriens are killed by flying, slashing enemy monsters. When the Mogadorians die, they don't bleed; instead they die the PG-13-friendly death of turning instantly into gray ash and scattering to the four winds.

I found the mythology of "I Am Number Four" vague and sloppy.

The book was co-written by disgraced "A Million Little Pieces" memoirist James Frey and the much younger Jobie Hughes, working together under the pseudonym Pittacus Lore. The screenwriters have endless fodder with which to work. But the spirit of the movie is heavy and calculating, in the "Transformers" vein. Only "Glee's" Dianna Agron, as the shutterbug sweetheart of Pettyfer's hunkanoid alien, brings a touch of class to the proceedings, which are likely to proceed directly to the first sequel.

 

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"I Am Number Four" Movie Trailer

 

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, and for brief language).

Running time: 1:50.

Cast: Alex Pettyfer (John Smith); Timothy Olyphant (Henri); Teresa Palmer (Number 6); Dianna Agron (Sarah); Callan McAuliffe (Sam); Kevin Durand (Mogadorian Commander).

Credits: Directed by D.J. Caruso; written by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Marti Noxon, based on the novel by Pittacus Lore; produced by Michael Bay. A DreamWorks Pictures release.

 

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