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Thursday, 08 July 2004 |
  While watching the DVD release of I, Robot there was this constant, high pitched sound coming from somewhere. Something like six cats fighting right outside the window. It was enough to make any sane person run from the room screaming. There were no cats, though. As it turns out, it was the spirit of Isaac Asimov wailing in agony. As has been done so many times before, the title of a great piece, or in this case, collection of works had been used not to bring them to the screen, but to discard them while using the name to make as much money as possible.
Adapting literary works is a tricky proposition under the best of circumstances. Many viewers, and particularly critics, hold these films to high standards, expecting them to include every nuance of the source. Of course, this is not possible, or any adaptation of a Jane Austin novel would be 37 hours long. I have always found it best to let the film stand on its own merits, while still expecting it to reflect the core meaning of the source. That is only one of the failings the movie version of I, Robot has when compared to the source stories. Listing the similarities is easy. 1) There is a robot suspected of murder. 2) There is a character named Del Spooner. That's all folks. Asimov's famous "Three Rules" are also present, but only so they can be conveniently discarded through what ends up being a most inane bit of reasoning.
Any expectation of I, Robot being even a halfway decent piece of science fiction is shattered with the opening scene, where the camera lingers on the profile of Will Smith's impressively cut form. OK, the guy obviously worked out, a lot, for this role. Of course, there is no other reason for it other than that opening scene. Smith plays Detective Del Spooner, a police officer who has a deep hatred of the robots which populate the city, helping humans with their mundane tasks. In an all too common and feeble attempt to create the illusion of depth, a series of deep, dark secrets is established, the first of which explains why Spooner hates robots. Spooner is summoned to investigate the death of the scientist (James Cromwell) primarily responsible for designing the robots he hates so much. To make matters more interesting, Spooner obviously has had a close relationship with the scientist, the reason behind which is kept from the audience. Deep, dark secret number two.
Spooner soon discovers a robot named Sonny (Alan Tudyk) who doesn't seem to behave according to established rules and immediately suspects him of committing the murder while his department determines it is a suicide and closes the case. As is revealed bit by bit, there is something odd about Sonny, but nobody knows why he was made differently from the other robots. Deep, dark secret number three. What takes up the majority of the rest of the movie is the standard "loose cannon" cop stuff, with Spooner disobeying orders, being attacked by robots, suspended from duty, continuing with his investigation, thinking he found the bad guy, discovering it wasn't the bad guy, finding a new bad guy, discovering he isn't the bad guy either, until he finally stumbles across the only possible villain remaining and can try to save the day. Along the way, he is assisted by another scientist, Dr. Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynihan) who also has had a more than passing relationship with the deceased scientist, the details of which are kept from the audience. Deep, dark secret number four.
Lack of respect for the source material aside, I, Robot also contains some of the most tiresome dialog, with Will Smith delivering almost nothing but his patented "clever" quips at every turn. He probably had three serious lines in the entire film. Another particularly annoying aspect was the constant use of purely computer generated imaging. Many scenes look like nothing more than high resolution video games, with not a single physical actor in them. This fact reached absurd levels once these animations started switching to "bullet time", a term which may sound familiar. "Bullet time" is the name given a clever technique developed for the The Matrix which uses dozens of 35mm still cameras to create ultra slow motion scenes which also rotate around the characters in the image. It can also be used to rotate around a still image. It was revolutionary, because it created scenes previously thought impossible using real actors instead of animations. Somehow, using the same look on a completely animated image seemed absurd and downright comical.
If there is one positive in I, Robot, it would have to be the robots themselves. On one hand, they are seriously cool looking, using a type of face replacement technology to incorporate the expressions of actual actors on their faces. On the other hand, they also demonstrate how far computer animation still has to go. While computer animated characters have come quite a way, they still lack the look of a physical object, still having a somewhat ghost-like appearance. It would seem the animators have not yet grasped the concept of how light and shadow play on physical objects. I expect this will be remedied sooner rather than later.
The bottom line is, I, Robot is a vacuous piece of pseudo sci-fi fluff wrapped up in a weak action film. That must have always been the intention, so why corrupt the title of a classic collection of serious science fiction in the process? The only possible answer is money. Would this movie have made less money with another title? Probably not. Adding insult to injury is the fact that it was directed by Alex Proyas, the visionary Australian director who brought us The Crow and Dark City, but not much else. Maybe he delivered all he had with those two films.
Starring: Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, James Cromwell, Bruce Greenwood, Alan Tudyk, Adrian Ricard, Chi McBride.
Director: Alex Proyas
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Rated: PG-13
Running Time: 115 mins
Release: 2004
Reviewer: John Rice |
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