For some crazy reason, went to see an opening night showing of the new teen fantasy/horror flick The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones… based on a highly mediocre novel without an ounce of originality that wasn’t borrowed from a mish-mash of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, and every other “all the monsters you read about as a kid are real” story… which was also, more to the point, written fairly poorly. And a wise man once said, it’s not what the stories about, it’s how it’s about it. The book was bad because it was written bad… the generic story could have worked in better hands. This movie? Just as generic but better than it has any right to be. Not a particularly great movie… super generic, but shot and edited with a certain style that keeps the improbably long running time moving along fairly well. Gets bogged down with characters and action scenes at the end and occasionally feels like they are just doing weird stuff, having weird scenes because, “why the hell not?”… but at least they are trying… something. Overall, fairly decent romance/fantasy/horror amalgam with typically hot guys and hot girls targeted at the CW crowd and Twilight fans (of whom were in the audience and they ate it all up).

Score: 76