Friday 23 August 2013

REVIEW - THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES


A maniacal fantasy film, the experience of watching which I expect is akin to having a migraine while simultaneously projectile vomiting and having your legs sawn off, only more fun. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is a steaming heap of bollocks that actually tastes a lot better than it smells. As an enthusiast of the art of film, I deplore this rabid, vacuous rape of the medium, of the fantasy genre and of the millions of dollars that were wasted on producing it; as an easygoing moviegoer, I had a blast. When it's not brilliantly awful (but it normally is), it's genuinely quite brilliant, in a beserk, Tsui Hark kind of way. All this mythological mumbo-jumbo, artlessly excreted over the lens, set to a clamorous soundscape of pure noise and fury... as exhausting as this inconceivably over-stuffed film is, it possesses a hysterical spirit that can't help but catch alight every once in a while. To pass the time in between such spurts, there's plenty of unintentional humour and fetish-gear-clad gothic hotties to sate your solicitude. There's no tangible attempt at a plot, and every manoeuver in that direction is hastily glossed over by refashioning it as a ruse to supply more baffling action or sickly romance. The amorous sections are undoubtedly the film's most dull, but they're the only ones where the filmmakers seem to know what they're aiming for. I don't know whether or not they achieved it, because I'm not a 13-year-old girl. You see, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones has been made as a paradigm of pure, authentic cinematic entertainment. It has no aspirations toward art, or education, or even basic storytelling sense. It is brash, idiotic and utterly evanescent. I still don't have the slightest idea what to make of it, but I know that I had great fun watching it, that I lmao-ed several times at the monumental inadequacy of the filmmaking, and at the general nonsense of it all, and that I think it's one of the silliest films I've seen. It is thoroughly absurd, and thoroughly dreadful, and I'd recommend it to everyone.

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