Product: I, Robot [Region 2] (2004)
Rating: 1.0
You Robot; Me Bored
This movie centres on digital effects and considerable noise. There is the ghost of a story here and, like a ghost, appears unexpectedly at times but, again like a ghost, is difficult to see and vanishes quickly.The movie holds your attention to a degree but in the way a series of explosions do. One goes off, then another then ... there's a pause, and then another. So when they stop you wait for the next one because you know it will happen shortly.I suppose my biggest problem with the film is the digital look. It is so excessive you want to tear your hair out. The actors look like people lost in a Twilight Zone episode where they've found themselves in a huge video game.As for the characters, it's fitting that James Cromwell plays a character who is seen only as a holographic image - something with no depth. This is pretty much what every character is.It's hard to fault the actors given what they have to work with. In fact, Bridget Moynahan as Susan Calvin is quite good and effective given the little room she has to actually act. But she's about the only one.For instance, there is the movie's star, Will Smith as Del Spooner . He appears to have phoned in his performance. But to be fair he has to spend the majority of his time being an action figure. But riding motorcycles and jumping from ledges is not acting. As an actor in I, Robot, he's a great stunt man.The sad thing about this movie is that there actually are the seeds of a pretty good story here. But they're lost amid cliche's, stereotype characters and the endless, unrelenting "set pieces," all digitally created and very boring.