Awful in so many ways.

Rating: 4/10 (27 July 2007)

Granted, we all know what I Robot was supposed to be, a blockbuster with dazzling special effects and a star turn by Will Smith. Nothing too heavy, just a plain good popcorn movie. As is too often the case though the blockbuster gets lost in lofty ambitions and bad performances. In the end I Robot is messy and unsatisfying.
Will Smith's character (Spooner) hates robots.....robots who just happen to be out in full force thanks to US Robotics. For some reason Spponer has a friend at USR who kills himself. And that gives Spooner an avenue to explore his distrust for robots. Nobody believes him, so he goes it alone, and sure enough, the robots are trouble. There you have the base for the scenes in this heap.
My first complaint is that the robots don't look real. They are presented as a confused jumble of animation and mechanics. I would have preferred if the robots looked more mechanical, or more like humans. Never did I actually believe that these things were robots, or a threat of any kind. That kind of takes the suspense out of the whole thing.
Will Smith hams it up during this whole film, ultimately becoming some macho action stud towards the end of the movie. This isn't really in keeping with the character. And his performance in general is inconsistent, likely due to the script he was given.
I suspect the story was supposed to explore prejudices, second chances, and the nature of being human. That intention was stunted by a lack of suspense and plausibility in the script. There was no doubt in my mind that Sonny the robot was anything other than sympathetic. There was never any doubt that Spooner would find a way to save the day. No suspense whatsoever. Avoid this paint by numbers action dud at all costs.