CGI takes over

Rating: 7/10 (6 August 2004)

"Suggested" is still rather euphoric! Besides the three laws, two characters and a company name there is very little resemblance with the collection of short stories of Isaac Asimov, called "I, Robot". At Amazon you can even order a "film tie in" with movie poster cover and credits on the back. This work is Asimov's original book, though. No connection with the movie whatsoever!
Having said this, I think "I, Robot" is still an admirable movie. It allows many afterthoughts, it provokes to be reconsidered again and again. Del Spooner's fundamental racism against robots for instance. Or Susan Calvin's love for them, though barely suggested in this film. The change of mutual oppression from both robots and humans of course gives a link to a possible sequel, but that would have to be an action movie, too, I am afraid.
I guess the main reason why this movie differs so much form Asimov's original work is that it had to be an action movie. The exploration of the robot's psyche, the admiration of their illogic and sometimes inventive rationalism is not a concern of this movie. That would be portrayed much better in "Bicentennial Man" with Robin Williams. Still as an action movie, "I, Robot" features surprisingly few explosions and dead bodies. And that might be the charm of it. It relies very much on dialog and suspense, but still neither the movie nor Will Smith is exactly Shakespeare material. One of the main motive for this movie might after all have been the display of robots.
Obviously masses of robots, robot face features etc. are computer animated with CGI. Unfortunately CGI seems to take over the movie  an interesting parable by the way. Many scenes or parts of them are so ostensibly computer generated that you feel transferred into a video game. The design and view of many scenes is totally surrealistic and a hard break opposite to the "real" movie scenes. Even worse, the clouds of flame in a central action sequence seem to be nothing more than sprites laid over an static background like in a cheap CDI game. That was very disappointing. We have seen some pretty impressive CGI works, but I think just from the image, the feel of it and the ambiance "Independence Day" looked much more believable than this movie. What has become of miniature models, makeup artists and so on? Complete CGI might work for Monsters Inc. or Shrek, but it totally fails for a "real life" movie. If I would have like to watch a video game, I would have visited a "Final Fantasy" presentation.
In the end, "I, Robot" was an entertaining movie with something to think about. I would have preferred it to be much more homogeneous with smoother CGI effects. Probably less of an action movie. But then again, this might have not been a movie a large crowd would have liked to see.