Review of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013) by Knm — 22 Aug 2013

Don't pay attention to the critics. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones was a really good adaptation of a fun and well-written YA Fantasy book.

Critics complain about how it's like a combination of Harry Potter meets Buffy The Vampire Slayer meets Percy Jackson meets Twilight. Everywhere they look, a plot point is "borrowed" from these other works.

So what? The books were actually well-written (unlike some OTHER popular books in this genre. Yes, I'm looking at YOU, Hunger Games and Twilight.) And the movie adaptation was well done, in large part thanks to the excellent casting. It is rare to find young actors who have this much chemistry on screen. (This is a large part of why the Twilight movies were so awful, and why the Harry Potter and Hunger Games movies were so successful.).

So, if you harbor an affection for YA sci-fi or fantasy, don't let the haters keep you away. This was not a B-movie, not a hodge-podge of incongruous plot points, and not a rip-off of other genre films. (In fact, many "dangling" plot points are there precisely because this is the first in a six book series. They eventually resolve! And I'm glad they got left in the movie, even if they would make non-book readers leave feeling like there was still a good bit of unresolved mystery.