Suspend your critical faculties...

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2005)

... and you'll enjoy this movie.
But if, like me, you have enjoyed Asimov's work *and* you know something of the current developments in robotics (and you have some understanding of logic), then this movie is filled with a very large number of errors. It's not been well thought out, and that detracts from it.
The key concepts are fine but the implementation of them is groan-inducing at times.
For example, in an era when Lake Michigan has been turned into a landfill site, why would you - as a corporation - inefficiently and wastefully store huge numbers of working robots in containers (with only a handful of robots per container)? The resources alone would be worth a fortune, quite apart from whatever energy source is powering these things. No company would behave like that.
Another example: the vehicles used to deliver robots are an enormous waste of space. The robots inside are not packed efficiently, and why would such a huge machine be used to deliver one robot at a time? The sensible thing is to have the new robot deliver itself, and having transferred specific details of the human owners' requirements to the new guy, the old robot would likewise return itself to the manufacturer. That's just common sense.
Another example: the ubiquity of robots of different generations seems to result in (a) crowded streets with robots just hanging around doing nothing, and (b) the usual detritus associated with purely human existence (including badly painted and poorly finished surfaces). With all these robots going to waste, wouldn't someone have decided to set them to work tidying and decorating the place? The only time we see any machine tidying up is in a tunnel, and then they're purpose-specific.
It doesn't take more than a moment's thought to determine that any society in which the machines take the place of humans in service-oriented positions will be one in which everything is tidy and spotless. Did housekeeping suddenly stop once the robots appeared?
Not only that, but today "script kiddies" and others hijack computers en masse daily and use them for their own purposes. Yet in this story it is claimed there has never been an instance in which a robot has committed a crime - it's pretty obvious that the future holds the unfortunate promise of lots of hacking attempts on robots and some are bound to be successful. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that criminal and anti-social activity applied to computers is going to be applied to robots too, yet we never see any instances of this.
The colors used in this movie are also pretty drab and uninteresting. Why do film-makers ALWAYS make the mistake of imagining a future in which there is no color except gray or hues of gunmetal? If you look at even poverty-stricken communities what's the one thing you notice most? How colorful they are. People go out of their way to try and inject some soul into their environment (unless of course the government of the day enforces drabness), and a society in which everything is so drab would instead be filled with color. There would be no reason NOT to be colorful. Color sells.
The look of the robots too was something that should have had more attention paid to it. The one thing that current robot development has recognized is that the machines have to look human enough to be acceptable but not so off-human as to appear menacing or disconcerting. These machines either look and act "cute" (compare the old generation of robots, who are more endearing than the new generation) or look disturbing (which is something the marketing types would have hit on straight away. Or maybe marketing is declared illegal in the future?) Without giving anything away, at one point one of the players gets to make use of some nice spray-on artificial skin, yet none of the robots have this. Why? This movie could have been SO much better if attention had been paid to the details. And don't even get me started on the illogicality of describing logic as "undeniable".
This is why I suggest that the movie will appeal ONLY if you suspend your critical faculties. Otherwise the constant errors are jarring and keep pulling you out of the story as you say out loud: "Huh? That doesn't make sense..." Other irritations include a few glaring product placements - I hate that in movies - and some clear design flaws (cars intended to only be used with a driver sat on the left - even current concept cars don't make that mistake), as well as no catering for the disabled (presumably they've all been forced to be made able-bodied in the future - bear in mind that there are disabled groups even now who refuse to have their disability "corrected").
The story line is thin but interesting - but then, it's based on Asimov's work, and I've always found Asimov to be thought-provoking.
The acting is good - Will Smith demonstrates once again that he's a natural performer in front of the camera and delivers a believable character to the viewer (although the description of his character as a "technophobe" is something of a joke, since he has so much technology at his fingertips. Someone didn't understand the meaning of technophobia). I can't recall a single wooden or unprofessional performance from anyone (although some of the extras were a little over the top).
In recent years there have been a number of attempts to make what might be called the definitive robot story, but they all fall down on the details, and it's in the details that true credibility resides (as anyone who is trying to create an animation will tell you).
While this is an enjoyable movie in other ways, I'm afraid I'm still waiting for the definitive "robot" story to be created...