Much Better than I Expected

Rating: 7/10 (25 October 2008)

The first thing to understand is Will Smith plays a relatively serious character, not his usual goofy persona. He makes a few wise cracks, but this is not a Men In Black IX.
I most enjoyed the scenes of ordinary plausibly realistic daily life, such a robot working an a diner, and the touching scenes reminiscent of 2001 where a robot faced execution. There is an enormous amount of computer animation. Much of the vision of the future is thoughtful and informed by the latest science. It is not just a bunch of people running around in togas and making pretentious speeches.
The problem with the movie is it keeps descending into mindless mechanised clone violence that is about as interesting as watching red and black ants fight and about as mindless. In these scenes the animation takes on silly, cheap cartoonish character that blows the illusion of reality. To make it worse, it is unclear who is fighting whom and why. All the robots are identical.