Invasion of the iMac-styled Robots.

Rating: 6/10 (17 July 2004)

I, Robot was one of those big summer movies that you saw the trailer for and knew just about how good it was going to be. The hype would try and build it up, it would claim to have a plot, but you knew what it all was going to come down to was Will Smith shooting some CG robots.
If you go into the movie knowing that, you'll get a little bit more out of your movie buck out of this film.
Throughout this movie, what stuck with me most was the horrendous lack of acting ability. You'll see a lot of other people in the trailers...but really, if your name wasn't Will Smith or Bridget Moynahan and you were in this movie, you're on screen maybe, 5-10 minutes tops.
Will surprisingly botches a role he's done so many times before, the unorthodox cop who's got a hunch. Half the movie it looked like he had a bad head cold or something, and he just wasn't able to deliver his lines properly. All he had to do was summon up Mike Lowry from Bad Boys, and he would have had it done.
Bridget Moynahan on the other hand, put on the worst fake "overcome by sorrow" display I've seen in a movie in a long time.
I don't know if it was the acting or the directors saying, "No, no, you're supposed to be going from completely calm to almost moved to tears!" but, it wasn't good.
The CG and the plot save this from being awful. The plot is average. Which in this movie, passes for a good thing.
That's not to say there aren't plot holes...Will's reason for distrusting robots is stupid, laughingly so. He blames a robot for making a poor judgment a situation while neglecting the fact that a regular human was completely incapable of GETTING TO THE POSITION OF MAKING THAT SAME DECISION.
Then in the climactic final battle, 2 groups have to team up to achieve their end goal. The call for security goes up, and Team A has hundreds upon hundreds of robot pursuers. Team B, who is in the same building...exactly 2 robot pursuers.
The robots do a good job of looking fairly menacing at times, so, kudos to the CG team for figuring how to make them look as innocuous as iMacs and yet as threatening as any other good swarming menace in film.
So, contrary to what other people are saying, this is not a good action flick. You don't want to turn off your mind. You just want to toughen up your skin, so you can tolerate some miserable acting. Leave your mind on so you can take in the story a bit, and just keep waiting for that one part where Chi McBride does his thang with the pump action shotgun. Rock on, Chi.
6/10.