I, ROBOT review

Thank God. I, ROBOT was nowhere near the disaster that I was anticipating. Whew. I went into this film with low and conflicted expectations. I’d heard that Jeff Vintar’s screenplay was genius, but I’d also heard that Akiva Goldsman akiva’d it up a bit. It was being directed by one of my favorite modern genre film directors in Alex Proyas, but I’d heard nightmare production rumors that Will Smith had taken over the film and locked Alex out of post-process, but then he got back in… And none of the advance screenings did anything, but lower my enthusiasm… and then there were those damn trailers, specifically that very first one, which I hated.

Coming away from the final film, I have to say I have a few complaints, but overall, I enjoyed the movie.

Let’s start with the problems.

1) The film should not be titled I, ROBOT, as it really isn’t at all Isaac Asimov’s writings… In fact if they had done something as simple as titling it, “iROBOT” it would have been more apt. After all… The film is essentially about an Apple-esque roll-out of the next generation ‘miracle of design’ machine, that is eerily perfect. But, the design for these new robots, well… I work off that dome iMac here at Geek Headquarters, and as I type now… just looking at the system, I wonder… will it start glowing red and attack me in my sleep. So much of the intellectual and serious minded hard-science-fiction has been replaced with fluffy ‘sci-fi’ littered with unWillistic action sequences, that no matter their lack of Willism, they still managed to produce a smile… but the whole time, behind that smile was, Asimov would freak playing over and over in my head. Even a microscopic change in the title… would just separate it that much further from being the exact title of a work, which means… one must think of this as an adaptation, when really… this is nearly a wholly original take-off on aspects and some rules of the Asimov universe, but this isn’t at all Asimov’s stories. As is, Isaac’s credit reading, “Suggested by Isaac Asimov” is kind of an insult, and the proper credit with this title intact should probably read, “Apologies To Isaac Asimov.”

2) This complaint has a lot to do with the design of the film. There’s a lot I like, and all the older robots, well, I like them quite a bit, but these new robots… It’s like this, the film takes place in the year 2035… and given how lame most products look in 2004, I think if in the next 31 years, that with the astonishing advances that the Japanese and Koreans seem to constantly be making in robotic movement and their ability to mimic human motion and speed, albeit in little 16” to 24” robots… Well, I just don’t think it’ll be too long till the scale of these suckers get up to more humanoid scale. Meanwhile, I’m sure there’s mounds of information and “brains” being worked on for AI and AI-seeming computer systems that can and will be incorporated. Already, object recognition and heat recognition are going great… and they’ve developed systems by which Robots can touch and feel things. This will end up happening… I just hope… I really hope that the systems won’t be this bland looking.

3) Bridget Moynahan is so stiff and bland a character, and I realize that that was on purpose to show she’s grown closer to robots than humans, but then… Sonny is more human than she is… but then, Sonny is more human that Will Smith is too. But more on that in my Sonny’s pretty darn cool section of the review. Also – it’s unfair… We get to see Will Smith’s nude butt in a shower scene that had women giggling and shouting their approval at our screening, but when Moynahan has her shower moment… she has a fogged up blurry piece of snowed glass in front of her obstructing her, surely wondrous buttocks. This film is way too sexist in all the wrong ways.

4) Chi McBride’s character of Lt John Bergin is so damn tired. He’s that senior division cop/officer that is always overweight, acting like they’re chewing a cigar and bitchslapping the “hero” of a by the numbers action flick sort of thing. He never trusts his officer, always suggests a therapist and at some point will always take the “hero’s badge,” which generally means the hero will… “buck the system and stay on the case no matter what,” and yeah… that happens here too.

5) The weird feeling that this is a film taking place in the exact time and world of Spielberg’s MINORITY REPORT – as it seems that Kiwi lenser Simon Duggan was following Janusz Kaminski’s lighting package to the f-stop. And that Patrick Tatapoulos was ape-ing Alex McDowell’s Production Design throughout. That being said, in my ways I prefer this film. Even though it has a more pedestrian plot line and it seems less developed… I just thought the sense of fun was greater in this movie, and that ultimately I was more entertained in this one.

Ok… Those are my complaints… What worked?

Well - I just like it. Maybe it was that I was thinking I would just hate it from beginning to end and walking in with those expectations, it was impossible to not be pleasantly surprised… Or perhaps, there was just a Pavlovian-reflex action the second I saw robots and I just love robots. Or maybe it was the thin slices of Asimov’s moral questions about the creation of machines to do the things we humans do and call life. Maybe it was Will Smith’s blatant promotional love of CONVERSE shoes circa 2004, but then the odd part was… while everyone seemed to comment on his shoes… I don’t believe we ever saw or were highlighted what shoes had become in the future… so in a way, it was just a crazy little Doris Wishman moment or two that I kinda dug. Maybe it was how Will Smith’s Detective Chicken Little was always raving about the sky falling, or that there was a big bad wolf in the meadow, to everyone’s complete and collective yawns.

Then there is Alan Tudyk’s Sonny… the robot that allegedly murdered James Cromwell’s Dr. Alfred Lanning. Who is Alan Tudyk? He was the hilariously great Wat in Brian Helgeland’s A KNIGHT’S TALE… you know the guy that said, “Un, betray us, and I will fong you, until your insides are out, your outsides are in, your entrails will become your extrails I will w-rip… all the p… ung. Pain, lots of pain.” I loved his character in that film, and often find myself using the phrase “I will fong you!” due to him. Some loons mentioned at the screening that he’s in some sort of firefly, but those mainly come out at twilight, and I’ve never seen him in one. BUT ANYWAY – in I, ROBOT – he’s the key feeling robot, and like Andy Serkis’ vastly superior character of GOLLUM, the character work is excellent here. And instead of playing him like a robot, he plays him more like a prisoner on death row. One that has resolved himself to his fate and his place in the world. I liked this character quite a bit, and in the third act… I legitimately love love loved his character and had wished that the film had had Sonny partnered with Will throughout the film in a more 48 HOURS style situation. Alas.

While the script may be pedestrian, the strength of Alex Proyas’ sure-handed direction and vision, kept me interested in the layers of the visual level of the film. I missed the rich bleakness of his THE CROW and DARK CITY… and wished that this had more of that type of style, but also appreciated the divergence visually he took from that universe, but I hope his future films won’t be this clean and antiseptic.

Overall, I came away from the film having conversations afterwards about what really we as a human race would do with Robots. I mean, if at every level of manual labor, Robots were applied, what would that do to national and international employment. All those people out of jobs, what do they do? In fact, it seems the only sort of job that would be safe would be creative, if only because the Robots aren’t creative. We also agreed that the development of Robots as a classless slave worker unit, to replace the underprivileged regular hard-working joes… well, to me, that’s such an evil Republican Big Business model, that it just felt too real and too scary. There’s even quite a few obvious parallels in terms of the robots’ thinking of how to protect us, that seem to follow the same logic faults that the current administration has fallen over to. Using the various fears of danger, to hand over more and more controls of us humans’ normal lives over to them. Everything from security to kitchen work. So, of course the liberal in me appreciated and enjoyed the parallels as just another in the constant subtle and not-so-subtle attacks on the future un-President and his mandates.

In the end – the film is entertaining. Of the 3 main Genre films of Proyas, this is my least favorite, but that’s THE CROW and DARK CITY… both of which I think are perfect… so, this had pretty high competition in terms of Proyas’ career.

Remember, low expectations meant pleasantly surprised, but not blown away.