Alpha Papa and the City of Bones

Out of the two films I managed to catch this week, one was a let down while the other was surprising enjoyable.
I am referring to The Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones, and Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, respectively.

I was very disappointed in City of Bones. It had a solid cast and some great sets but it still couldn't be saved from Overload Central. While some things weren't explained, even by the end. (The runes thing wasn't. It seemed just a case of, 'yeah, write these things on you and you'll have that power. Ta-dah!' with no information about the pros and cons of such. Or maybe it was mentioned and I missed it? That was the main problem with the movie.) Other things happened too fast. Too many characters introduced. Stunts in fight scenes were cut too short, so we only really glimpse the character doing a cool back-flip or whatnot, which causes a slight bout of disorientation.
Perhaps as a result of introducing too many people at once. The characters didn't inspire any kind of interest in me. We're never given time to really care about them. When one, I don't even recall his name, was injured I really didn't give two swinging cats whether he survived or not.