Kick Your ATM

Rating: Null/10 (19 May 2008)

That's where you got the cash to see this idiocy in the theater, right? I didn't pay for I, Robot; I saw it for free, clipped and snipped to fit into two hours, and thank God for small favors. The less I, Robot, the better.
Wow, what they can do with CGI! Special effects wizards can fill the big or little screen with dazzling images (in this case, beautifully emoting machines and a bright, cheery, sun-washed Chicago of the future), but I, Robot can be summed up in three phrases:
1. Will Smith's torso
2. Very little story
3. Not a damned thing in sight to make this story memorable
I wasn't even frustrated by the movie; I expected eye-candy and I got it.
Which brings to mind Stanley Kubrick's film of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a story of the continuing evolution of man, past the human body and its confines. Remember when Mission Control informs Dave Bowman that there was nothing wrong with the communications unit that HAL-9000 said had failed? The camera holds on the red eye of HAL for what seems like five seconds, then cuts back to Keir Dullea, masking his appalled horror that the most important piece of equipment on the Discovery has failed. HAL, in that five seconds, proves that he is a thinking, sentient being by deciding to kill the crew, right then and there.
It is a dazzlingly human moment, when a machine decides it must kill to survive. And Kubrick reinforces this evolution of HAL to human by showing you the similarity between HAL's "eye" and those of the mission commander. Blank, masked, and deadly.
2001 was based on a great piece of literature. So was Isacc Asimov's I, Robot, but you would never know it from the later. I, Robot is as close to perfection in pop CGI junk. Twenty years from now, people will still be talking about Kubrick's masterpiece.
And you'll be able on to catch the quaint I, Robot on the late, late show on your ether-vision projection.