You know how at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke is talking to Leia and he mentions how she’s his sister and she says, “I know. Somehow, I’ve always known.”? I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wondered why Luke didn’t say something like, “What? You mean when you had your tongue down my throat on Hoth you knew you were my sister?!?!?” It was a little kinky, but just wait until you get a dose of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, a film so kinky the porno industry won’t even have to alter the title for the pornographic spin-off.
Just imagine if after Luke and Leia confirm they were brother and sister they just said, “You know, I don’t really believe it. Doesn’t feel like we’re related, maybe we should give this whole ‘me and you’ thing a go, regardless of the genetic consistency.” Mix in some vampires, werewolves, demons, witches, warlocks in their boxer briefs and time-traveling swimming pools and you’re pretty close to what this movie has to offer, but the key is to make sure you piece it all together without rhyme or reason. Suffice to say, it’s a mess from start to finish with nary a highlight to be found in its 130-minute running time.
The story is so convoluted and pointless I’ll just skirt around the edges of the plot. Just know a teenager named Clary (Lily Collins) teams up with some people called Shadowhunters after her mom (Lena Headey) goes missing. At the same time an ancient Shadowhunter named Valentine (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is threatening to return if he can only get his hands on an ancient cup that does… something. Truthfully I think the cup makes more Shadowhunters but I’m not entirely sure. However, they said “cup” so many times all I started doing was trying to figure out lyrics to put to the music of Cake’s “The Distance” every time they said it.
As if frequently the case, Clary has powers, but they’ve been suppressed for years so she’s just learning how to use them and among the Shadowhunters she’s teamed up with she’s got a wandering eye for Jace played by Jamie Campbell Bower whose got the brooding, one-eyebrow-raised look down pat. This guy looks like he’s got so many years of pent up sexual tension that if someone doesn’t offer themselves to him soon he’s either going to explode or make out with a mirror. Just wait until the scene where he seduces Clary in a magical garden where she “accidentally” stumbles into his arms just as the clock strikes twelve — “It’s your birthday!” — and the sprinkler system turns on — “Oh dear, I forgot about that.” No more than 30 seconds later he and Clary are yelling at each other and it’s just as confusing as it is downright hilarious.
I wrote down exactly two notes while watching the film. Both are quotes, one of which describes a character as the “high warlock of Brooklyn” which I also found hilarious and another is a revelation Clary comes across while Jace is tickling the ivory and explaining to her how music played at just the right tone can get a demon to reveal themselves to which she says, “So Bach was a Shadowhunter.” The audience is laughing and rolling their eyes as director Harald Zwart cuts to a painting of Bach with a focus on hints of tattoos coming out from under his shirt. These tattoos, you will learn, are ruins coveted by the Shadowhunters, each of which represents some sort of power or something… Everyone has them and they all look like wannabe versions of George Clooney‘s Seth Gecko from Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn.
Zwart, who directed The Karate Kid remake and Agent Cody Banks, has every appearance of being a director for hire, executing a vision that is not at all his own and it seems he couldn’t care less about the final product. Either that, or first time screenwriter Jessica Postigo‘s screenplay is too much for Zwart to handle. No matter, the overall ludicrous nature of the storyline got the best of the entire crew. The editing is so fast and loose, characters will find themselves in trouble only to be abandoned for minutes at a time. In fact, some plot threads still remain open and not in the same way films typically leave themselves open for sequels, but in a way that makes you say, “But, what about…? And where did…?”
For example, at first glance one scene involving the group of Shadowhunters entering a vampire den on a rescue mission seems to have been inserted for no reason but to have the Shadowhunters fight some vampires. A little side action if you will. Though, there was some allusion as to what may have happened to one of them. However, it was only hinted at and certainly wasn’t wrapped up in this feature, which leads us to…
Reportedly, Screen Gems has already put into motion a sequel, The Mortal Instruments: City of Ashes, which will apparently begin filming only a couple months after City of Bones hits theaters. I don’t see how this is possible. If this comes to pass, Screen Gems must have found some magical place where consumers will pay to watch crap in massive quantities or a lot of early buyers around the world have stepped up to make a sequel to such a travesty a possibility.
There is nothing redeeming about this movie outside of serving as an at-home version of Mystery Science Theater. To that point, I did walk out of the theater with a smile on my face. We had fun laughing at how bad this film is (hence the reason it avoids the flat-out “F”), but anyone going in looking for any form of entertainment outside of laughing at what happens on screen had better search elsewhere.
