Daniel's Review

A film that actually has a unique premise, sadly disappoints.

 

That’s how I can describe the fantasy action film ‘The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones’, based on the 2007 young adult novel with the same title.

 

Let’s start with the positives first, Lily Collins (Mirror Mirror) is the best in the cast as she gives the best performance as her character Clary. In fact, this character is the most developed character in the film and is the only character you really only care about because the other characters aren’t as developed, or hardly any development made, to care about the other characters.

 

The visuals in this film are actually pretty good and shine when they need too.

 

Now the negatives, this film is really just an average action flick that borrows too many familiar fantasy film elements such as ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Twilight’ and ‘Star Wars’, surprisingly.

 

The writing is another story, the film suffers with cringe-worthy dialogue, except for a scene in the middle of the movie that was actually quite interesting and is quite obviously the most developed scene in the movie that I actually quite enjoyed, honestly. But overall, there are heaps of plot holes, terrible dialogue and way too long, really.

 

This film is 130 minutes long, it could have been shorter, because the last 30 minutes I was getting extremely bored and annoyed that the film would just never end.

 

There are jokes, yes there are jokes that I laughed every now and then, but that doesn’t help much. I really wish the script was stronger than this and the film was shorter, because this film could have been an amazing first instalment in a hopeful new film franchise with a unique premise. The film does have good visuals and a very good acting performance by Lily Collins.

 

Score: 4/10