You Are Not

Rating: 4/10 (20 December 2008)

I've long loved post-apoc movies. The filmmakers shutting down roads, towns, showing us normally populated meccas as baron and remote. Allowing us to peek in on "what if we were the last person of earth?". My first memory (hey, I grew up on the 80s) of this was a teen entry into the genre with 1984's "Night of the Comet". That ran out of ideas after 45 minutes and threw in zombies to complete the running time. And he we are 23 years later, with the same result.
Yes, I know this is a based on a book from a LONG time ago, but it doesn't diminish the same sad fact. That why do all of these catastrophe movies have to ALWAYS exclusively involve a variation of blood-thirsty bizarros roaming the streets, looking to kill? Can't anyone just focus on a lone survivor, and what one would do with so much time? "Cast Away" came the closest to getting it right, and "I Am Legend" can be lumped with the "Night of the Comet"s and "28 Days Later"s.
But that's only the half of it. When Smith isn't dodging wack-job CGI geeks, his "down-time" is handled in the most embarrassing fashions. Setting up mannequins in a video store, interacting with them, listening to Bob Marley(??), delivering pablum to a German Shepard such as, "If I'm not back by nightfall, leave". Think he can't top himself later? Grab hold of somethin'.
In the film's most inexcusable, deliriously moronic moment, Smith actually recites lines...to Shrek!! No, not one line, not two. He delivers nearly an entire scene's worth of dialogue as he freaks out a woman and child he's discovered. I had felt like the filmmakers had switched genres mid-way through and had decided on slapstick.
The CGI...is well, the CGI. Monsters look fake, move fake, overly artificial refuse. But we knew it would be, so enough on that subject.
The ending then suggests that Smith be regarded as some kind of saintly warrior with a deliberately nauseating voice-over that had me throwing pens at the television. Not to mention zero resolution to main plight of the characters (I guess that's in the second book?)
Smith is good as usual, but he can't pull this underdeveloped, shoddy screen adaptation out of its own mistaken direction. Netflix "Night of the Comet" instead. And hate me later.