An adaptation of the first installment of yet another multi-volume “young adult” fantasy book series, “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones” is a mad farrago of elements cobbled together from every source imaginable from “Harry Potter” to “Star Wars.” It’s got magic, vampires, werewolves, witches, warlocks, angels, demons, killer dogs that morph into monsters, swordfights, a romantic triangle (or really quadrangle), an evil super-villain, an ancient master, and a beautiful butt-kicking heroine as well as a dashing hero. By the close you half-expect Sasquatch to make a cameo appearance. (In fairness, zombies are dismissed as non-existent, and there are no elves or fairies or dragons or hobbits—at least in this chapter.) Overstuffed, overlong (at more than two hours) and brainless beyond belief, it may appeal to the teen girls who’ve made the books a success, but anybody outside the existing circle of fans is likely to be bored silly by this elephantine piece of hokum.
Author Cassandra Clare’s distaff Potter stand-in is Clary (Lily Collins, who played Snow White in Disney’s misbegotten “Mirror, Mirror” and here tries to channel Kristen Stewart—hardly the best role model), an apparently normal New York City teen who lives with her single mother Jocelyn (Lena Headey). Her best buddy is Simon (needy-looking Robert Sheehan), a dweeby type who’s obviously infatuated with her. Lately, however, Clary’s been troubled by disturbing hallucinations, most involving a strange symbol, and when she and Simon stop off at a club one night after attending a poetry reading, she—and only she—can see a brawl in which a man of sinister aspect is killed by three leather-clad attackers. To make a long and tedious story short—there’s a lot of dumb exposition audiences have to slog through—the three killers are Shadowhunters, half-angel beings who identify and do away with demons controlled by a Voldemort-type villain named Valentine (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, curiously anonymous). He and his thugs are searching for the tale’s MacGuffin—a chalice that’s apparently the key to rejuvenating the Shadowhunter line but can also bring him unlimited power.
It seems that Jocelyn had once been a Shadowhunter too, but had purloined the cup from Valentine and hidden it. Now she’s kidnapped by the brute, who’s also after Clary since she might know the prize’s whereabouts. So the girl joins up with the three young Shadowhunters—handsome Jace (Jamie Campbell Bower, a blonde fellow with high cheekbones who had roles in both the “Potter” and “Twilight” series, played King Arthur in Starz’s ill-fated mini-series “Camelot,” and is about as stiff as a board) and brother-and-sister team Isabelle (Jemima West) and Alec (Kevin Zegers)—who take her, along with Simon, to their leader Hodge (Jared Harris) in their invisible castle, which apparently occupies a few acres of prime New York real estate (though it looks like an empty lot to mere “mundanes”—this fantasy’s terminological equivalent of muggles).
From this point the plot turns to chase mode as Simon’s kidnapped by vampires to serve as bait to lure Clary into a trap, which of course it does. Then all sorts of additional elements are added to the mix. There’s Luke (Aidan Turner), Jocelyn’s old friend, who turns out to be the leader of a band of werewolves. And a witch-demon named Dorothea (CCH Pounder), who just happens to live downstairs from Clary. She’s nothing beside a slinky fellow called Magnus Bane (Godfrey Gao), who’s identified as Brooklyn’s Warlock King. And have I mentioned the pack of monks who live in a Shadowhunter cemetery (the titular ‘City of Bones’) who magically restore the memory of Clary’s lineage that her mother had magically suppressed?
If you find it difficult to plow through all of this, imagine how much more painful it is actually to sit through it on the screen, especially since the above precis barely scratches the surface, and there are throwaway incidentals that in the end come to nothing. (There’s a portentous shot, for example, that indicates that Simon has been bitten by a vampire, but that’s left hanging. And there’s a passing mention of Alec’s gay infatuation with Jace, but that goes nowhere too.) There’s exactly one witty aside, involving composer Johann Sebastian Bach; otherwise the humor, such as it is, is puerile. Everything comes to a head with a huge confrontation at the Shadowhunters’ castle, where Valentine shows up and a series of revelations, each more implausible than the last, occur while Harald Zwart (director of such gems as “Agent Cody Banks,” the second Steve Martin “Pink Panther” movie and the “Karate Kid” remake) and his editor Joel Negron work furiously to cut between three or four fights happening simultaneously. The result is exhausting, both visually and narratively. And yet there’s the threat of a sequel (‘City of Ashes,’ already in pre-production).
Whether that will ever actually see the light of is dubious, given the quality of “City of Bones,” with its numbingly convoluted and derivative plot, wooden acting and cheesy effects. After all, “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” “The Golden Compass” and “The Vampire’s Assistant” all died after a single episode, and “Percy Jackson” managed a second installment only by the skin of its teeth). This series should certainly meet a similar fate, though one should never underestimate the purchasing power of twelve-year old girls; just think of the “Twilight” phenomenon and of One Direction, whose concert film is just around the corner.