In the aftermath of the dominant Twilight and Harry Potter sagas,The Mortal Instruments makes its move to take the YA cinema audience – a demographic that eluded Beautiful Creatures and Stephenie Meyer’s own The Host. But while City of Bones hammers down a confident start, it soon applies that mallet to its own head, beating itself down to a narrative mush of illogic and loose plot threads.
Lily Collins’s Clary is a girl whose search for her missing mother (Lena Headey) thrusts her from ordinary teen to rookie Shadowhunter – though the bravery and independence she supposedly gains as a half-angel demon-slayer is watered down by her overplayed sense of confusion and bewilderment. Twilight’s Jamie Campbell Bower does his best as the lead romantic attachment Jace but can’t save an underwritten character from being dull.
The Mortal Instruments’ failure to sell its world and key relationships brings other flaws to light. Be prepared to recite the following: “Why’s that guy here?”, “What happened to the vampire bite?”, “Why are they waiting for the demons to unfreeze?”, “Why did he drop the L bomb after one pash!?” This film adaptation presumably seeks to capture every aspect of its source material, but this results in depicting plot machinations and character motivations that are punctured full of holes.
The daunting two-hour-plus running time is alleviated somewhat by the peppy pacing, but only in the sense that it prevents a bad movie from being unbearable. It’s also helped by a decent smothering of action sequences, though none of them outshine the total smackdown Headey delivers in the opening 15 minutes. After her one moment of badassery, Headey spends the rest of the film asleep. Good call, Lena.
‘The Mortal Instruments’ Movie Times
