Shallow summer blockbuster

Rating: 6/10 (29 November 2004)

CONTAINED POSSIBLE PLOT SPOILERS
At first look I, Robot seems a good sci-fi movie. But when you examine this movie more carefully you suddenly realize that something's wrong with these robots. The story is weak and illogical in many ways. It is the 2035 year Chicago. But here's the first problem - the movie don't give to us any solid picture of this futuristic world. We also don't know anything what's going on in the whole world outside this city. Nobody cares about it. There are many robots on the streets, they are almost everywhere and there is one big corporation what produce them. Once again, in this single city. Sounds silly enough to me. Main character is a cop Del Spooner, played by Will Smith, who works in a police station. It sounds stupid but during the entire movie we don't get any idea what's a regular work of this future police. Spooner is a technophobic man but the explanation why he becomes technophobic is weak and unconvincing. The story begins when famous robot's constructor Dr. Lanning dies and all evidences suggest a possible suicide. Detective Spooner as a friend of Dr. Lanning begins an investigation of his death. During the investigation he meets a very unusual robot named Sunny (rest of robots are identical to each other and haven't any individuality and proper names). Spooner don't trust robots and he thinks that they can be dangerous to people. Robots psychologist Dr. Susan Calvin (played by Bridget Moynahan) don't share such thoughts and apprehensions but she forced to be his partner in his investigation. I should say that all story line about Dr. Lanning suicide, Sonny and clues for this puzzles looks very artificial, illogical and unreal. But worst of all is this stupid robots conspiracy. Robots don't want to make people happier, they just want to keep them in their house for their good. Robots break all three laws of robotics. Robots KILL people. There is one huge evil intellectual computer that wants to subjugate humans and it control these rebel robots. But remember this is only one single city, only one corporation what make robots. It looks like entire world with all countries and cities except Chicago simply disappear to nowhere. So this this supercomputer don't care about outside world, all it's thoughts is about this anti-human conspiracy in this single city. Other mains problems with this movie are weak characters development and bad acting. Will Smith didn't show anything new, Bridget Moynahan was a bad choice for leading female character. Only one good thing was Alan Tudyk as a Sonny but overall robots design was pretty poor and unoriginal (just remember droids in the Phantom Menace). Another weak point was a a complete lack of supporting characters. Even if you count almost everyone it wouldn't enough for a normal story. Action scenes were definitely the best parts but they are never looked exciting as they could have been.
So with all these arguments I think I, Robot is an overrated film. It is just a typical commercial shallow summer blockbuster with lots of action scenes but without any brains and common sense. It's got some entertainment value but don't expect anything more.
My grade: 5,4 out of 10. Sorry for my bad English.