Spectacular, Amazing, but Just Not All That Interesting

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2008)

Maybe I AM LEGEND is just immune to being filmed. This is the third try, and once again close but no cigar.
Visually it's truly amazing. I'm very glad I saw it in a theater and didn't wait for the DVD. The scenes in an abandoned and overgrown Manhattan will take your breath away. Every time the action moved to the streets I kept thinking, How in the world did they do that? And that's just the problem. I shouldn't have been so aware of what a technical achievement it was, and wouldn't if there had been any surprises in the plot.
It's very possible that I just see too many movies (I write reviews for two websites) and that if I were a 'civilian' I might have been more impressed.
Will Smith's performance is commendable. If he'd had a stronger script to work with, this would have been even better.
One of the most amazing things about the film was its use of sound. More accurately, the lack of sound. The director wasn't afraid to use silence or just natural sounds like wind and birds to create an effective mood. There is a very sparse musical score. In scenes where it would have been easy to have bombastic music telling us how to feel and response the film's makers trust the audience to make their own connections.
One of the weakest story elements is the flashbacks to the hero's attempts (failed, of course) to get his family to safety. The studio spent $5 million and hired an army of extras to show the chaos of the evacuation. Nope, sorry. Didn't work. The only thing the flashbacks do is break the forward development of the story.
Something I really missed was Neville's relationship with the chief vampire/mutant/whatever, who had been his friend before getting sick. There's a character referred to as Alpha Male, but we know nothing about him before he changed over. The monsters- almost entirely computer generated- are just the fast moving zombies from SILENT HILL and 28 DAYS LATER and RESIDENT EVIL and goodness knows how many other films.
To me one of the most interesting things about DAWN OF THE DEAD (both versions) was, oddly enough, the costuming for the zombies. Nurse, nun, football player, bride, cap and gown, work uniform, Hari Krishna robes, we had a sense of who these people were before the died and came back as mindless killers.
People look down their noses at THE LAST MAN ON EARTH because it was made in Italy on such a low budget, but it is still the most faithful adaptation of the book in many ways. The scene where Neville's wife returns after she has died was hugely effective.
Maybe, as I said earlier, I AM LEGEND really is unfilmable. Having tried with varying results three times, maybe Hollywood will finally give up and move on to other things.