Review: I Am Number Four

I AM...NEVER GOING TO SEE ANYTHING BY ANYBODY WHO WAS INVOLVED IN THIS MOVIE EVER AGAIN.

I Am Number Four
Director: D.J. Caruso
Date of Release: February 18, 2011
Reviewed by: AKI

So now that the Oscars are all done with and we have celebrated the best movies of 2010, lets look forward to the award season of 2011-2012.

I AM NUMBER FOUR will, without a doubt, be up for a few Razzies. This is, after all, possibly the worst movie ever made.

We follow John Smith (Alex Pettyfer), a teenager who moves to a small town called Paradise who has trouble fitting in because he is an idiot… and an alien. He falls for the pregnant chick from GLEE (Dianna Agron) only in this movie she’s not pregnant, she's an artsy pseudo-photographer named Sarah. John barely has time to deal with the adolescent drama surrounding Sarah and her jocky ex-boyfriend when the aliens that wiped out his home planet come along. The bad aliens are on earth looking for 9 special aliens from John’s planet. For some reason, these bad aliens with big feet and sharp teeth are killing these special aliens in order. In order of what they never really say, but they have already killed three and John is number 4.

At the five-minute mark, I leaned over to my friend and apologized for dragging her to yet another bad movie (the other was THE EAGLE). For it is about five minutes into the film where we are given a cheesy circa-80s voiceover telling us John’s life story which is frankly quite boring for an alien. It is all embarrassingly lazy screenwriting.

A third of the way through the film, John begins to discover that he has superpowers. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t have suspected before since, you know, he is from another freaking planet. We can only guess he discovers his powers now because now he knows he is in a movie.

So we trudge along with horrible special effects, a forced love story, a geeky abused kid, a dog that turns out to be an alien and an Australian chick who looks like Kristen Stewart (Teresa Palmer) who reveals she is number 6. I would explain all this further but why? It would be a waste of space even for the Internet. All you really need to know is this:

The bad aliens find out where John is, they tear up the town, kill people and release hell on earth. What does John do? He runs away and goes to a dark room to develop a roll of film and share a sweet moment with his pseudo-artsy girlfriend. Yep, I began rooting for the bad aliens. So what if they want to wipe out all humankind and take over earth? They also want to kill John and that makes us friends. Besides, maybe earth should be wiped out if we keep making pedestrian movies like this.

RATING: ---- That's right! Nothing! This movie doesn't deserve a star or apple or a screen to be played on. Too bad the film actually has a decent soundtrack. Really Kings of Leon? You won't lend your music to Glee but you lend it to this pile of rancid vomit. And Adele...you're breaking my heart.