Whereas The Pursuit of Happyness was a somewhat irregular Will Smith role I Robot seems taylor made for him. Will Smith is a man of action, quick wittedness and charisma as we've come to expect. So anyway, the year is 2035 and robotics has come a long way. All robots are apparently manufactured by a single, multi-billion dollar corporation who are planning to put their brand spanking new unit into every home in the country. Will once again plays the role of a city cop who is apparently the only person in the world who doesn't like the idea of entrusting our lives to the care of programs and before long has made it his personal mission to prove that robots are capable of human harm.
You see, Will Smith has a tragic, flashbacky issue with robots that naturally remains supressed for the majority of the movie. Lucky for him he becomes involved with an initially-uptight-hostile-woman who eventually becomes something of a love interest and whom Smith is eventually able to confide in. Mind you the romantic interest in this movie is a little lacking but I'm fairly certain they always are in Will Smith movies. In fact pretty much every aspect of I Robot feels like it was manufactured by a Will Smith Movie Machine. If I had to sum up the movie in a breif sentence I'd say "it's like Ghost in the Shell if it was concussed and had Will Smith in it." I mean it's the same not too distant, slightly souless setting. It's the same "what makes us human" and "could robots develope a soul" cyberpunk philosophies being explored. It even has the robot/computer software teaching us about the nature of our existance situation in it. The only difference is that aesthetically everything in I Robot is so blindingly white it looks like a eutopia for Apple. Speaking of product placement did I mention the 2004 vintage Converse Hightops? Well they're in this movie and quite shamelessly referred to on more than one occassion. Mind you I actually found this entertaining and quite frankly I don't give a shit if they're plugging products in a movie. But you know I thought it might be worth a mention because bloggers love tossing themselves off over how clever they are at finding product placements.
Oh and stop me if this sounds familiar to you at all. The bad guy was one of the good guys being motivated to kill and oppress people in order to "save humanity from itself." I mean you clever script writer types could come up with something a little bit less overused than that? It's the kind of plot twist I'd expect from a Resident Evil game and even though it doesn't actually make I Robot any worse it certainly stikes me as somewhat lacking.
But all in all maybe I'm being a tad harsh. Do I like I Robot? Yeah I suppose so. It's entertaining and has a plot that makes sense and if you haven't seen Ghost in the Shell already you might think it raises some pretty interesting ideas even if they're only alluded to or breezed over. In a lot of respects it's comparable to Independence Day in that it is improved a vast amount by the fact that Will Smith is in it. Mind you Independence Day is by far a worse movie, but I stand by my comparison. As I said before this is a typical Will Smith movie and it's done pretty well. Movies like this serve as a nice reminder that cliche's can actually polish up quite nicely if you treat them right.
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