Better than people imply

Rating: 7/10 (14 August 2004)

I saw this film a week ago, quite liked it and then read the reviews on here. After seeing so many negative reviews, I went back today and saw it again, for my own curiosity, bearing in mind the things people had mentioned.
Forget the Asimov source for a minute and imagine it as a story in its own right. It's quite good, really. Will Smith is Will Smith as usual, but that fits in neatly with the film and isn't a problem. We know he can act when he needs to, but he doesn't really do much of it here.
Seeing the film and criticising it for not being like the I, Robot you read as a child is missing the point. And as other people have said, there's an awful lot of little Asimovisms in this movie.
Obvious similarities are drawn to films like MINORITY REPORT (the cars, the casual technology) and INDEPENDENCE DAY (um, it's got Will Smith in it) but they're irrelevant. And to any recent "feel-good" film about racial equality. Which is what most of the story's about really. I've noticed other comments mentioning that you don't notice that for most of the time, the cast on screen is black or a robot... well, you don't, but isn't that the way it should be? People playing people...
There are no real surprises, everything plods away, but it's a satisfactory film. It's not too marred by Hollywood's normal "You've got mail!" ideas of what technology will look like in a few years time. The robots, for the most part, put the CG effects in other current films to shame. Completely. They're really very good. You can forget you're watching a special effect.
The demolition scene was silly, and the car chase scene was a bit of a waste of time, and featured the only couple of moments where I would criticise the special effects. Took me out of the film for a moment.