For all of its homicidal aliens and toothy beasts, “I Am Number Four” did contain one element that genuinely unsettled me: the line “produced by Michael Bay.” Nooooooo!
Number Four (the bland Alex Pettyfer) is a lonely superpowered teen who is one of the only survivors who made it to Earth from the late planet Ripoff.
In an attempt to sucker “Twilight” fans, the story makes Four and his father-figure mentor Henri (Timothy Olyphant) the town newbies in Paradise, Ohio, a burg whose 15-year-olds wish they had fangs or at least capes.
Four is one of a few kids who made it to this planet from a distant solar system. Three has just been killed, meaning he is now due for extermination by the evil (I can’t type the word without laughing) Mogadorians, a clan of aliens who are so weak and inept they should have their intergalactic supervillainy license revoked.
How dumb are these “Mogs”? To find Number Four, they hire a gaggle of nerds who run a Web site modeled on “The X-Files” that logs evidence of alien life. When the nerds succeed and capture Henri, only one Mog is around when Four shows up to rescue him, even though it appears a whole day has gone by in between. What could be important enough to keep the Mogs away from their enemy? “Buy one, get one free” night at Applebee’s?
The nerds have no trouble finding Four because, upon moving to Paradise, he immediately enrolls in high school as “John Smith” — nothing suspicious about that — and in hours is showing off his superpowers.
He can throw a football hard enough to knock over an athlete; his palms light up, much like E.T.’s finger-flashlight, and he can throw things around without touching them. He allows himself to be photographed and his pictures posted online, even though Number Three was tracked down and murdered while taking much more care to hide.
Adapted from a young-adult book that wasn’t so much written as assembled by the fabulist author James Frey and a co-writer, the movie doesn’t even belong in the same category as the melodramatic “Twilight” mediocrities. Those films come from the heart in some way. The heart of an idiot, yes, but they seem to matter to the storyteller.
“I Am Number Four” throws in shape-shifting dinosaurs that come out of nowhere and disappear again when the effects budget is used up, laser guns that look like they’re from the star system Hasbro, an ass-kickin’ chick in leather and even a scene in which someone coolly saunters away from a fireball in slo-mo. The bad guys wear long black “Matrix” coats.
The first kids Four meets in high school are a nerd, a jock and a sweet artsy girl. Characters say things like, “I can’t do this without you.” A cute dog comes in. At some point, you begin to suspect that maybe not a lot of soul and anguish went into this script.
For all its borrowing, though, the movie betrays an utter cluelessness about why its role models worked. Where is Four’s weak spot? What is keeping him from his ladylove? Why should we care about a prop as dismal as the intergalactic lunchbox that supposedly contains magical secrets about Four’s past? And why are the Mogs so easy to kill, so featureless?
They flail around with swords while the valiant ones turn invisible and slice them to bits. They’re so disposable they don’t even get names: The highest-billed one is listed as “Mogadorian Commander” in the credits.
But maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe, once you’ve come up with a name as stellar as “John Smith,” you just don’t have any creative juices left.