"It was okay, I guess"

Rating: 5/10 (3 January 2008)

I had no idea what I was in for when I stepped into the movie theater to watch "I am Legend." This was actually a really good thing as I had no expectations, because had I had them I would have ultimately been disappointed. The most that I could say for this movie at it's conclusion when asked how it was, was simply "it was okay. I guess." Here was a movie with a huge budget a big name. I think that I even enjoyed the first half of the movie, until I thought about what I was watching. Here was Will Smith driving a red sport car, apparently hunting a herd of deer through the abandoned streets New York City. Cool? Yeah. But what were deer, and eventually lions, doing in the middle of New York? Are we supposed to believe that they had escaped from the Central Park Zoo? Are we supposed to believe that these deer and lions had somehow figured out some way to survive zombie attacks that all of the millions of humans on the island had simply ignored (save Will Smith's character, of course)? After this hunt scene, the movie started its steady slide downhill. I'm glad that the makers showed a little of Smith's character's life alone in the city, but there was something strange about it, he seemed too calm and comfortable, which I know that most people, even after three years, would have trouble achieving when there were blood-thirsty zombies leering from all the shadows. However, that was the most believable part of the movie so I won't bash on it anymore.
The worst part of the movie, without a doubt, was the poor quality of the zombie-diseased human-creatures. The digital characters were poorly rendered, they were hardly above video-game quality. There was nothing that these super fast, super strong creatures had that couldn't be created by a good hair/makeup team, and this would at least make them seem like they might exist in reality. Also, two zombies actually ran headfirst into Smith's car and completely tipped it over at one point in the movie, moving them from poorly generated computer images to super strong/fast zombies that were vaguely reminiscent of the robots from "I, Robot." Despite these problems in the first half of the movie, I was still hanging on to some sort of hope that they would be compensated for. Like the fact that the zombies were getting smarter, they had a leader now and they had even laid a rather clever trap for Smith at one point. I thought that there would be some sort of clever explanation for that, but of course it was not only never explained but never even dealt with. Then I thought, maybe the back story with Smith's character might prove to be interesting, but alas, besides a few flashbacks to his family's death, it did not explain much even though it kept hinting at an interesting story as to why Smith's character was so committed to fixing this zombie problem.
Overall, I found a lot of disappointment in this movie. I like Will Smith. I like the disease-ridden city stories. I don't even mind a few zombies getting shot at every now and then. I loved Sam the dog! The makers of this film had so much to work with, like a big budget, big leading actor, and a character with a past, but like so many movies coming out these days, threw it all away in favor of a thrill scene like Will Smith deer hunting in his fancy car that made little to no sense. If you want a movie that deals with world-consuming disease, go with "28 Days Later," which handles all the material of "I am Legend" but in a more sensible manner, and in my opinion, the zombies are scarier.