Derivative and Contrived

Rating: 5/10 (23 July 2004)

'I, Robot' was OK. The effects were good enough to keep me entertained. The robot story was OK but the interpersonal relationships were banal. Bridget Moynahan as the female lead was forgettable. Her acting consisted of pouty looks and I wanted to lend her my comb and compliment her gums. Will Smith was good given the script he had to work with. I thought there were too many beefcake shots then were necessary for the story and not enough cheesecake. There were two obligatory shower scenes. A must for future set action movies. Are we to take from this that at least hot water will exist and people will be clean in the future. The movie had big problems. The effects were cartoonish. The robot's movements did not look real but looked more like cartoon mice escaping from a cartoon cat. In Spiderman this worked since Spiderman is essentially a comic and the CGI effects helped to bring out the cartoonish aspects of a comic figure and integrate him into reality. The robots also looked cartoonish but since they had no comic heritage there wasn't a tie to them and they just looked out of place. The human characters did little than fire guns haphazardly in crowds of people. The robot design was derived from Attack of the Clones. Little was innovative. Will Smith's costume of leather jacket and Converse sneakers was laughable. He was an anachronism. I understand his costume evoked modern urban dress but the movie was set in the future and his dress would be analogous to a character wearing a Zoot suit in movie set in the present day. The rest of the costumes were typically Matrix, (or when did it start, with Blade Runner?), derivatives, long leather coats or dark somber tones. Why does Hollywood insist on dressing future people in funereal dress? All bad guys have to wear black and leather. Many action movies could very well be black and white movies. Where is the color? In the news recently were pictures of the murderous death squads in Liberia who wore women's wigs and bathrobes as they sadistically killed at random. They were scary. The black leather clad, and also stubbled, bad guys in movies are a cliché. Where is the innovation? Where are costume designers? I see the same old Borg stuff over and over. What a bore!
SPOILER ALERT How did Will Smith hurt his arm? They lingered over the beefcake scene of Susan touching the arm but I did not catch how the injury occurred.
Spoiler warning defunct.
The ending seemed too Deus ex machinish, actually machina. It didn't make all too much sense and seemed contrived and rushed. The Matrix gun play was also derivative and contrived. The whole movie was contrived and derivative just mindless cartoonish effects. The "Three Laws of Robotics" were integral to the story but were never attributed to Isaac Asimov. That was a shame.