Reviewed by: Joe

Directed by: Alex Proyas

Produced by: Topher Dow, John Davis, Laurence Mark, & Will Smith

Cast: Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, James Cromwell, Bruce Greenwood, & Alan Tudyk

Released: July 16th, 2004

Action/Adventure and Science Fiction/Fantasy 1 hr. 55 min. Will Smith stars in this action thriller inspired by the classic short story collection by Isaac Asimov and brought to the big screen by director Alex Proyas (Dark City, The Crow). In the year 2035, robots are an everyday household item and everyone trusts them, except one slightly paranoid detective (Smith) investigating what he alone believes is a crime perpetrated by a robot. The case leads him to discover a far more frightening threat to the human race.

One of the biggest compliments attributed to I, Robot is its concept of a relatively small cast, allowing the focus of the audience to center on the its main characters rather then distracting them with numerous side-characters that do nothing but clog up an already complex storyline. But that’s where the kudos stop with several of those characters coming off as flawed or seriously misguided by the script. Will Smith, once again in his summer block-buster mode, gives an engaging performance as Detective Del Spooner, despite the character’s noticeable flaws. Whether it’s due to the way the script was written or the way Smith portrays the character, Spooner’s wise-cracks are too over-the-top, with most of them, namely the one’s early on in the film, failing to be the least bit humorous. Once you are able to look past that, Smith manages to the make the character quite interesting and mysterious with his emotions playing a prominent factor in his unpredictability. Alan Tudyk, who provided the voice work for the robot Sonny, does an adequate job with the limited material given to him but can’t raise the character above anything more then a cheap CGI distraction. The problem with the character of Sonny is that the filmmakers attempt what director Steven Spielberg failed to do with Haley Joel Osment’s character in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, which was to present a robot that had dreams, felt emotions, and, in some weird way, possessed a soul. The reason this failed, and this stands true with I, Robot’s attempt as well, is that when all is said and done, a robot is nothing more then highly advanced can-opener. You can build it up as much as you want, throw in some high-tech gizmos, and anything else you can think of but you won’t be able to replicate anything remotely close to a human being with a soul. A soul is what makes humans unique above any other creature and nothing, not even by the hands of man, can duplicate that and place it inside something else, let alone a hunk of metal. And what was the point of Shia Le Beouf’s character in this film other then being a pathetic attempt at comic-relief, something this film possesses too much of.

Overall, as hard as I, Robot attempts to come off as brilliant vision of a futuristic utopia where all humanity has to do is look into the inner depths of our souls to live in peace and harmony, it comes off more along the lines of scientific mumbo-jumbo and computer-animated special effects run amok thrown into a blender at top speed resulting in nothing more then a garbled mess. Whether or not the film accurately projects the writings of Isaac Asimov, Robot’s radical theories and story elements will go over most heads and those that do understand them will be disappointed by the lack of depth into how these conclusions were made. The special effects, though marveling at times, seem to be more the focus of the filmmakers then the script as nearly every scene seems to put more detail and concentration on the computer animation then how the story shapes out in the end. How can a film that seems as bad as this get any worse? By finishing it off with a final sequence that feels like the screen writers themselves didn’t even know how to end this disaster. The filmmakers would have been better off just ending the film with Detective Spooner and Dr. Susan Calvin on top of the USR building looking out upon a rising sunset. Sound clichéd, doesn’t it? Sure it does, but a clichéd ending, or any ending really, would have been a whole lot better then the perplexing sequence the … You can’t even call it a ending since the scene resolves nothing and just leaves the audience with more questions with no idea on how to answer them. Are we to assume there will be a sequel to answer them? What if the film bombs? What if there is no sequel? Then what? I, Robot may have seemed like a neat summer distraction, quite possibly even thought provoking, from the juiced up trailers and television spots but advertisements can be deceiving and they are no different with this film. If you aren’t a fan of Will Smith or special effects outweighing the plot, save your money and rent either The Matrix or Terminator 2: Judgment Day … It’s practically the same thing only ten times better from everything this film presents.