The Mortal Instruments - City of Bones : A slow and dreary first instalment

‘The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones’ is the latest of a number of teen fantasy novels that have been adapted to film. The book reached number eight on the ‘New Your Times’ best sellers list and if the franchise is successful, we have a lot more to come with a total of six novels in the series. The studios must be confident of the content and the books fan following as they’re already in pre production for the sequel.

For the most part the film has a rather slow meandering pace, is overly dramatic and at times cheesy. The romantic moments are clunky and seem about as natural as a dog playing the piano.

The film is not without its redeeming features. Some of the action is well choreographed, the special effects are good enough and there were moments where the film is genuinely funny having most of the cinema laughing out loud.

But the dreary pace that the film takes while the story unfolds will lose most punters. I would say that most of the blame for this falls on the shoulders of Harald Zwart whose most notable films prior to this include ‘The Karate Kid’ remake with Jackie Chan and ‘The Pink Panther 2’. The 130 minute running time could easily have been trimmed into a more digestible size.

As far as performances go, they all do well enough for the genre and target audience, just don’t expect them to win any awards. In fairness, they’re all reasonably well cast staying true for the most part to the characters from the novels by description and personality.

Lily Collins (Mirror Mirror, Priest) plays the films lead as ‘Clary’ who discovers she’s a ‘Shadowhunter’ after her mother is mysteriously taken one morning. Clary then goes on a journey of discovery about her and her families past, which includes the mysterious league of Shadowhunters. As a Shadowhunter, Clary can gain supernatural abilities that assist other Shadowhunters in killing demons. This has helped them keep the balance between good and evil across the ages. You might expect then that the antagonist would be some mega demon with plans to take over the world. Surprisingly this is not the case, showing the film is not entirely predictable. 

All in all the film is most suited to fans of the novels or fantasy genre. The story seems to be interesting but is overshadowed by its slow and over dramatic delivery. You never know though, if the film studio’s can pull off a win with ‘Twilight’, they might also get some success with ‘City of Bones’.