Rates with Sam Taylor for "Worst Credit Line of All Time"

Rating: 4/10 (24 July 2005)

First off, let me say that it is an OK flick with excellent production design, reasonable acting, big action scenes, excellent CGI from Weta Digital, etc. But, oh!, the screenplay.
Fair dinkum, Isaac Asimov must be spinning in his grave so fast, you could use him to power a small city. The screenplay is laughable and is everything that Isaac Asimov's writing is not. It is clichéd to the point of ludicrousness (maverick cop with bad attitude that no-one believes? Again?). Stupid to the point of being unintentionally funny (the writers should have checked out the "Galactic Overlord's 100 mistakes to avoid" website to remove the more risible plot devices).
Unintelligent, (well, mostly unintelligent). The one time they strayed from attempting to rewrite one of the I. Robot short stories (such as 'Little Lost Robot'), they did OK. The scene where Will Smith describes his main motivation brings up a number of interesting philosophical questions. But this exception only serves to illustrate how much better the screenplay could have been.
And it has corny dialogue. Cheesy is another word that comes to mind.
The screenplay also completely misrepresents the I, Robot books. Susan Calvin is a brilliant, but cold person. With a wit like a scalpel and the sort of psychiatric knowledge to intimidate others. Not the sort of emotion riddled half-wit as she is portrayed here. The three laws are built into the substructure of the brain. To violate the first law ALWAYS causes the robot to "seize up", they can not be subverted just by downloading a new set of instructions. The stories are meant to get away from this "dull hundred-times-old tale" where "Robots were created and destroyed their creator" (both quotes taken Isaac Asimov's introduction to "The Rest of the Robots"). But the movie does just that. The robots are not supposed to be terrifying. But in the movie, they become a sort of terrifying monster, part Terminator and part soldier-ant colony.
I'm looking forward to the "Director's cut" version, where they remove all mention of Isaac Asimov and change the names of all of the Asimovian characters to non-Asimovian ones. They can keep the Three Laws. After all, they are so common as to be nearly ubiquitous. Then, and only then, would I consider it worth the overall rating that this movie has.
Now, I'm going to read my copy of 'I, Robot' to get the awful taste of this appalling travesty out of my mouth.