My own three rules for I, Robot

Rating: 4/10 (26 July 2004)

When I saw the first early trailers of I, Robot, I can honestly say I was not impressed. Much of those early glimpses featured a wise cracking Will Smith doing his best Eddie Murphy joke a minute imitation while investigating whether or not a robot of the future had committed a murder, something they were thought to be incapable of doing. Later trailers dispensed with most of the jokes, and showed us a more serious side of the film and I began to have hopes that I, Robot might be better than I initially thought. This in turns brings me to the first rule of the three laws of movie reviewing:
1.	First impressions do count for something
The reason I bring this up is because Isaac Asimov also gave us some rules. These are THE THREE RULES by which robots of the future must abide by: 1.	A robot may not injure a human being or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. 2.	A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law. 3.	A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
Now that you know those rules you can forget about them because the I, Robot you see on the screen makes little use of any of those rules. You know going in that the robots are going to run amok, rules or no rules which means the only use for them in this film is so we know that these robots are going to break every one of them. What I, Robot also does is to take a great idea by Asimov with infinite possibilities and conflicts, and turns it into another long winded CGI filled yarn with Smith thrown in to play a bad ass cop straight out of Bad Boys.
In the world of the 2035, it seems robots will become an important part of most of our lives doing many of the mundane tasks we have grown accustomed to doing for ourselves. Police Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) is an odd kind of chap. He hates robots and doesn't think they can be trusted. When a friend of his, Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), who works at major robot supplier U.S. Robotics, appears to have committed suicide, Del begins to suspect that it wasn't suicide at all and a robot might have committed the crime. When Del finds the good doctor's favorite robot, Sonny, hiding in the same room that Lanning performed his swan dive from, Sonny quickly becomes major suspect number one. Of course nobody, including psychologist Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynihan), the owner of the company, Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood), and his boss Lt. Bergin (Chi McBride) believes such a thing could be possible as no robot could conceivable break or even bend THE THREE RULES. It seems because of Del's robot psychosis, he's cried wolf one too many times. And there, in a nutshell is where a lot of the problems with I, Robot begins.
Although Del's hatred of robots is eventually explained, it comes off as nothing more than a plot contrivance so that Del can play the part of Chicken Little. When will filmmakers learn that there are THE THREE RULES in regards to such plot contrivances?
1.	A hero in a film that continually suspects the innocent or is constantly making unfounded accusations will never be believed.
2.	A hero in a film who makes such accusations will never be believed until it's too late. Even if the audience knows he's telling the truth.
3.	Any use of the first two rules makes your film predictable, repetitive and boring and are totally unnecessary.
As if one plot contrivance isn't enough, I, Robot hampers itself with two of them. Because of the same situation that led to Del hating robots, it seems Del is also sporting a bionic arm. Why does a character have a bionic arm? Because there are THE THREE RULES of having a character pretending to be The Six Million Dollar Man.
1.	A character sports a bionic arm so that at some point it will accidentally become uncovered to surprise the audience.
2.	The Bionic arm will eventually be uncovered by the female love interest so that she can appear sympathetic and understanding towards the hero.
3.	The Bionic arm can be used to perform impossible feats flesh and bone can't, thus enabling the screenwriter an easy way to write the hero out of situations he wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of escaping.

The early scenes when Del is questioning Sonny are interesting and hold promise, but it doesn't take long before I, Robot disintegrates into one long CGI chase after another, making little use of its initial premise. We know the robots are going to run amok. We know that there is more to Sonny than meets the eye. We know that Del will somehow escape every dangerous situation he encounters keeping in the tradition started by James Bond some 40 years ago. We know that Susan will eventually believe him and turn into his best ally. We know as soon as U.S. Robotics start delivering thousands upon thousands of robots they will be marching down the street like so many metal clad Nazis.
What's really sad about I, Robot, is so much is wasted by its predictable plot, its unending chase sequences, and even more predictable convenient plot devices. The robots are fascinating to watch and the CGI created Sonny (voiced by Alan Tudyk) gives the most intricate and interesting performance in the film. Maybe they should have created a CGI Del character also. The visual effects are stunning and interesting to watch, but the fact remains that when you have viewed so many of these artificially created worlds with a new one hitting the screen almost weekly, without anything worthwhile going on, they end up becoming nothing more than watching the latest Playstation or X Box video game without getting to participate.

Earlier I mentioned one of my THE THREE RULES of movie reviewing. Let's review:
1.	First impressions do count for something
2.	Second Impressions are okay if your first impression is wrong. Second impressions are most welcome especially if your first impression is negative.
3.	If my first impression is totally negative, and the second impression agrees with the first impression, than I have no choice but to give you my grade.
And for I, Robot it's a D+.