It might be a matter of splitting hairs instead of atoms, but the filmmakers behind I, Robot took care to mention that their movie was only "suggested by" famed author-scientist Isaac Asimov.
Director Alex Proyas and the boys knew that "inspired by" would be pretentious as well as false advertising. And "based on" would imply that Asimov's future-shock collection of short stories would somehow be given a cinematic equivalent here.
Actually, even "suggested by" is too strong. This movie is more like "vaguely associated with" because the filmmakers bought the title.
The truth is that Asimov, a Mensa member who died 12 years ago, probably would have been "appalled by" this cartoonish creation, which was a decade in development yet invokes only the most simplified elements of Asimov's written universe.
This is a step down even for Proyas. Unlike his earlier, more sophisticated sci-fi films -- Dark City and The Crow -- his version of I, Robot is just a lame-brain summer romp for 12-year-old boys.
The time frame is 2035. The setting is Chicago. The design elements are interesting enough, a logical blend of funky traditional and slick futuristic. Short of a nuclear holocaust, the future should embody the past in 21st-century cities.
The weakest link here is the look of the robots, especially when assembled like Nazi troops at the Nuremberg rallies. The oldest models seem to be Star Wars rejects or junk left over from Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. The newest ones recall The Abyss aliens with bodies. The deliberate involving of Third Reich iconography is unoriginal and tired.
As for the story, Will Smith stars as a Chicago detective who dresses retro, especially in an old pair of sneakers. This is part of his radical psychology. Smith loathes and mistrusts robots, which have transformed mankind into a leisure class. Alone among the masses yet harbouring a bitter secret, he yearns for a low-tech world.
Meanwhile, his hi-tech nightmare is rapidly changing. A new super-robot is being introduced by U.S. Robotics, under its buttoned-down CEO (Bruce Greenwood). But the splatter-suicide of a genius robot engineer (James Cromwell, seen primarily in hologram-like scenes) puts the plan into question, the company into turmoil and our fearless detective into death-defying action.
Smith investigates the suicide, which he believes to be a murder perpetrated by a robot named Sonny (voiced by actor Alan Tudyk and created through digital special effects). The filmmakers are proud of him, bragging in the press kit: "Sonny is the most realistic, emotionally complete, three-dimensional CGI character ever created on film."
This is an absurd, even arrogant, claim -- for anyone who has seen Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy knows otherwise.
In any case, acting the oaf, Smith has to deal with Sonny and also hooks up with a robot psychologist (Bridget Moynahan), who spouts brainiac-like nonsense as if she was a robot, too.
With these obvious pieces in place, the Jeff Vintar/Akiva Goldsman script ploughs ahead in even more obvious fashion. Nothing is left to ambiguity or subtlety. Adult viewers might cringe when even basic story elements are explained, over and over again.
It helps not at all that most of the film's performances are so wooden. In the place of depth, Smith resorts to his trademark witty quips, most of which are not that funny in this movie. Moynahan is wretchedly mannered. Greenwood is standard issue as the villain/boss. Cromwell's task was hopeless. Only Tudyk, working on the physical aspects of the Sonny character, as Andy Serkis did with Gollum, brought something fresh to the equation.
But I, Robot is still just a box of popcorn, a summer time-waster, and not a real film worthy of its progenitor, Isaac Asimov.
(This film is rated PG)
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