Once again, teenage growing pains mean superpowers...

The lonely son of a dying planet, sent out to into the depths of space to protect an alien world, relies on his extraordinary powers and sense of Right and Wrong to protect his new-found home. Sound familiar? I’m talking, of course, about the plot of I Am Number Four, the first book in a series of young-adult science fiction novels written by ‘Pittacus Lore’ (an apparently ‘in-world’ pen name of Jobie Hughes and James Frey), the adaptation of which is shortly to hit cinemas nationwide.

To give credit where it’s due, the film is less Superman-inspired than that vitriolic opening paragraph makes it sound. Alex Pettyfer stars as Number Four, one of nine aliens sent to earth to one day fight against the baby-eatingly evil ‘Mogadorians’ who were responsible for the destruction of Four’s home planet, Lorien. Four lives on earth with his Guardian, Henri (played by the wonderfully grizzled Timothy Olyphant), as they travel through America in an attempt to avoid the murderous attention of the ‘Mogs’. In a baffling and completely unexplained conceit, the children of Lorien can only be killed in ascending numerical order, allowing the film to start with the death of Number Three and so put our freakishly hunky hero in just enough peril to warrant a hundred minutes of whizzes and bangs. This Matryoshka murder method may have something to do with the necklaces worn by each of the numbers, which are stolen by the breathtakingly camp head-bad-guy (played with pantomime relish by Kevin Durand) but, for all the exposition the viewer is given, it could just as easily not.

Number Four is playing in the ocean with his pretty-boy friends when Number Three is killed, leading to the spontaneous formation of a scar on his leg, lots of blue light and an awful lot of shouting. Having unwittingly outed himself for the freak he is, Four must pack up and head off to a new town. Calling a Michael Bay-produced young-adult thriller ‘clichéd’ may be a tad easy, but in this new town Four meets A Kooky Girl, A Loner Nerd and A Meathead Jock, who interact in exactly the way you’d expect. After falling for The Girl, befriending The Nerd and making an enemy of The Jock, Four manifests his latent superpowers in a sort of strange second puberty involving lights from his hands and telekinesis, rather than awkward acne and a quavering voice. The film then follows the standard ‘super hero comes of age’ template which we all know and love. Borrowing from, amongst others, Buffy, Predator and The Terminator (at one point I swear there’s a debt owed to The Lion King), this movie never seems to be ashamed to pinch a successful device.

While formulaic in parts, I Am Number Four does have some very nice ideas which make fine additions to the superhero canon: even to a grown man, hands shrouded in an eerie blue glow look damn cool and the development of scars on each Number as another is killed is an effective device, while there is one moment where the old thriller trope of the car refusing to start is played with in a very novel way.

Alas, these high-points tend to be dwarfed by awkward dialogue and mawkish sentimentality. There are moments so unbelievably saccharine that it took a tremendous effort of will not to throw up an entire branch of Interflora and a range of Care Bear dolls. The fight scenes, whilst offering some respite, all suffer from the typical Michael Bay affliction of looking like they were filmed by a cameraman standing on a Vibraflex machine, meaning that keeping track of anything at all becomes an exercise in eye-crossing futility.

This is not to say that the film isn’t worth watching – it will doubtless keep children entertained over the half-term break, while I would personally recommend seeing it solely to see how much of a monster Kevin Durand makes his character. He attacks his lines with such gleeful abandon that he manages to somehow combine high camp with an air of genuine malice; by the end of the film he comes across as the sort of character who would happily spend his evenings feeding the contents of a petting zoo through a wood chipper for no reason at all. On top of that, there are moments which, if explored, could have made the film something really special (the scene where Number Four yearns for the idealistic American home, a concept which has only ever really existed in cinema, would have been wonderful had it been given more than a passing glance). Sadly, they never get the screen time which they really deserve.

While often derivative, I Am Number Four does have some very fun ideas. Clearly set up with sequels in mind, if director D. J. Caruso gets his act together and trims the fat, this could be a series to look out for.

I Am Number Four opens in the UK on Wednesday 23rd February 2011

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