Decent Will Smith, but vacuous story and inept special effects.

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2007)

How does Hollywood make tons of cash? Well, first off, you get a A-list star that publicly emits the good guy pheromone: Will Smith. Then you take a great sci-fi, apocalyptic narrative and strip all the excess fat and juicy details from it until you end up with a rail of its former self. Then you make sure that the narrative only has one main protagonist that needs to be paid reasonably. Make sure that your film heavily uses CG and blue screen. Now, you have this basic script with this A-list hero and weak special effects and you have I Am Legend.
All I have to say is that the basic movie-goer has no understanding of how or why they are getting ripped off. All they see is the pheromone ridden A-lister with his shirt off performing with a constant psychosis fervor and they are in heaven. They don't notice that the antagonists are without real back story, substance, or humanity. Why would an average movie-goer notice this? Now, considering I read a 10 year old draft of a much better version of this film, I feel completely cheated. 8.50 for a matinée. Damn, is it any reason people have stopped going to the movies. Even the most naive of movie-goer eventually figures out that movies are crap for the most part. They are product placement vehicles and absentminded gutter punk trash. No depth.
I want my depth. Did Will perform well? Yes. Did he earn his money? No. Why? He accepted the crappy script.
Anyone that thinks this is a quality film is probably 8-17 years old and doesn't have a clue of what a movie should be.