A version of this review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

I am Number Four is based on the tween novel of the same name by Pittacus Lore. Lore, as the dust jacket describes him, is a thousand-year-old alien who has come to Earth to tell stories as a warning to humanity of a gathering extraterrestrial threat. Lore, it turns out, is really James Frey. Yes, that James Frey. Turns out, Oprah owes us yet another apology.

John Smith (a charisma-less Alex Pettyfer) is running scared. Ruthless killers are on the hunt and unless the teenager continually alters his identity and moves from town to town, he will surely be killed. But John isn’t your average adolescent. He and his guardian Henri (Timothy Olyphant) are some of the last members of a nearly extinct alien race, hiding out on Earth from the forces that obliterated their home world. In Paradise, Ohio, John thinks he might have lost his pursuers and finally found true love (Glee’s Dianna Agron). But just as the fugitive begins to settle into his new life, he discovers that he is neither as safe—nor as powerless—as he believes.

Hollywood is so anxious for the next big franchise to replace Harry Potter and Twilight that they are throwing every multi-book sci-fi fantasy series they can find at the screen (in this case, the movie rights were scooped up so quickly that the inescapable sequels have yet to be released) in the desperate hope that something…anything sticks. This ain’t it. (Then again, given the abysmal quality yet gargantuan success of Twilight, what do I know?!)

The profoundly unfortunate side effect of this position is that these films are never self-contained or autonomously complete. They assume a caravan of sequels at the expense of the individual narratives. The initial films skirt character development, pose far more questions than they answer and elucidate no back story because they operate on the fundamentally arrogant presumption that they will have plenty more opportunities to do so later on. More often than not, after a dismal box-office performance, the hoped-for sequels are canceled, and few viewers ever revisit the originals due to their inability to stand alone. Such is the case here.

It’s not just that I am Number Four, directed by D.J. Caruso (Disturbia, Eagle Eye), is bad—it’s just plain silly. It takes forever to get going and once it does it crashes headlong into ludicrousness. The baddies are as caricatured and cartoonish as possible without actually being cartoons. Dramatically speaking, it’s unfortunate all American teenagers spend their days doing the exact same thing. All these movies are starting to feel as if they are shot at the same high school with the exact same actors. Teenage melodrama is already a dangerously sappy brew, but it is even more preposterous when you integrate bad science fiction.

For a guy who knows he’s next on a very short hit list, John sure doesn’t act like he’s concerned. His character habitually does the opposite of what basic self-preservation would dictate, all in the name of an exciting plot. This is extraordinarily slothful writing. One thing is for sure—alien teenagers are exactly the same sort of self-serving, disrespectful, know-it-all, devil-may-care horn-dogs as their human counterparts. This may make them appealing to their target demographic, but it certainly doesn’t imbue them with a necessary sense of “other.” In fact, the aliens in I am Number Four toss around their origins and how they got here so casually that they might as well be describing growing up in Poughkeepsie. There is no sense of wonder, awe or otherness whatsoever (aside, of course, from those magnificent telekinetic abilities—abilities so cool they don’t remotely deserve to be in a movie this dumb).

© Copyright 2011 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by D.J. Caruso
Starring: Alex Pettyfer, Timothy Olyphant, Dianna Agron, Teresa Palmer, Callan McAuliffe, Kevin Durand
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and for language.
Running Time: 110 minutes