The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones Review

You know that feeling you get when you’re unfortunate enough to have to dine at a TGIF, Applebee’s or Ruby Tuesdays? You’re server comes over and gives you a big ol’ smile that’s as fake as your boss’s when they passive aggressively tell you that you suck at your job. They hand you a gigantic laminated menu complete with pictures, because management assumes (and maybe correctly) that its clientele is too stupid to visualize what a triple cheeseburger or fettuccine alfredo may look like. You then spend high-end restaurant prices for a meal that was probably thrown together weeks in advance with the cheapest ingredients that can legally be used—portioned, frozen, microwaved, and then finally served to you.

Harald Zawat’s The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, the film adaption of the popular(?) book series by Cassadra Clare, is the movie version of eating at one of these meccas for American’s with cheap tastes.

There is almost nothing unique on the menu at any of those places. I would not be shocked at all if their owners just went to a bunch of local diners and eateries, copied the most common dishes, then found a way to make them as terrible as possible.

And this is precisely what is wrong with The Mortal Instruments. Clare, who according to ultra-reliable sources (some person I was talking to about the movie) got her start as a Harry Potter fan-fiction writer, and I guess wondered, “what if I take these Harry Potter stories I’m writing and mix them with elements from Twilight?” This is thoroughly evident throughout the movie. Except, where as Harry Potter and, to a lesser extent, Twilight were original ideas (I will despise you for all of eternity Cassadra Clare for forcing me to even remotely complement Twilight), Mortal Instruments is clearly just a cheap knock-off.

Where we have muggles for humans in HP, in Mortas we get "mundane," which is just a synonym for "boring" that nerds and snooty critics with only the largest of sticks up their butts love to use. Instead of Hogwarts we get "The Institute." Hmmm, what’s a clever name for an institute my characters can use for sanctuary? BY JOVE I'VE GOT IT! I shall call my institute THE Institute! Instead of the vampires and werewolves we get in Twilight we get vampires, werewolves, demons, and demon killers. Wow Clare take it easy, don’t overexert yourself with all this creative thinking.

The plot itself is a dizzying smorgasbord of characters doing things and going to places that are only half way explained, but the overall gist of it is as follows: some girl named Clary Fray (Lilly Collins) is super-duper special and she is destined to do something even more really super-duper special. Everyone but the bad guys just decide to drop everything so they can help her—including putting their lives and their friends’ lives in danger. And if you aren’t willing to sacrifice all that is important to you for her, then you will die.

But I guess if you want a more detailed plot summary, Clary, a normal every day MUNDANE  human, starts to have visions. Clary witnesses a person savagely murdered, medieval execution style, in full view of everyone, but only Clary is able to see the murder take place, and that is apparently because the murderers are actually good guys called shadow hunters, and the dead guy is actually a demon, none of whom can be seen by boring humans—oh excuse me—mundanes. It turns out that she is the daughter of a runaway shadow hunter, and a warlock has been suppressing her memories since she was born. Then Clary's mom is kidnapped by two of the most henchmanny looking henchman in cinema history. They're in search of something called the Mortal Cup, which everyone in the magical world wants.

The film is supposed to be laden with mysterious moments, but they are so obvious that the only real moments of mystery are the plot holes that constantly pop up throughout this lazily hashed out thing.

This story could have been rife with second guessing, double crosses, and betrayal. But either the writer, writing team, or director decided to portray the characters so basically that you know precisely who the good guys and bad guys will be. Worse than that, there are no moments where our good-guy characters even entertain the notion of not sacrificing their lives for Clary, even if it meant the undoing of everything they’ve ever known or loved. Clary herself never makes any real choice or decision that would help develop her character into the special girl she’s destined to become (aside from choosing which cute boy she likes the most). It makes the whole thing just a jumbled boring mess.

The film gets good performances out of Clary's mom (Lena Headley)—and holy crap is that Jonathan Rhys Meyers? and Jared Harris? A shockingly accomplished group of actors for a film like this. Another surprisingly good performance comes from love interest, Jace (Jamie Campbell). While the kid may look like the love child of David Bowie and Draco Malfoy, he does a good job of being a likeable smartass. The only other (unintentionally) worthwhile moments were the hilarious club scene where I felt like I was transported back to a late 1990’s vision of the future with everyone dancing in leather dominatrix clothing (did the costume designer REALLY think Jamie Campbell looked good in a sleeveless leather hoodie?), and the scenes where our two young lovers barge through incest relationship barriers like General Patton on a tank rolling over pansy Nazis.There’s not much to like about this Ruby Tuesday’s edition of Harry Twilight and the City of The Appetizer Sampler Platter. Approach at your own risk.