Would Isaac have approved?

Rating: 7/10 (19 July 2004)

I used to work in NYC in publishing more than a few years back, and during that time I got to meet and hang out with the great Isaac Asimov, who discussed with me all sorts of things, including his obsession with robots. While watching this film, which is loosely based on his ideas, I was wondering if he would have approved of it, and my educated conclusion is. ..yes and no.
I think he would have enjoyed the way the world of the not-so-far-off future looked in the film, and I think he would have liked the way the robots looked. I think he would have had no problem with Will Smith, and I think he would have found the film to be entertaining overall, a slick little piece of summer-blockbusting. At the same time, he probably would have thought it was tritely simplistic and cliched, certainly not as deeply thought-provoking as it could have been, on so many levels. And if these indeed would have been his feelings about the movie, I would have had to agree with him ~ they didn't completely 'ruin' it by any stretch, but it just didn't have the weight it could have had, ultimately - when you left the theatre you weren't still thinking about it, or at least I wasn't, and in this respect it was the perfect summertime escapist fare. But there could have been more. Close, but no radium-infused hydrofoiler, as Isaac might have said.