Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with an early review of I AM LEGEND. Can't say this is surprising to me, but I really do hope I radically disagree with this review when I ultimately see the flick. I've given up hope for a faithful adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel, but I was still hoping it'd be a big tent-pole style fun time at the cinema. Looks like maybe not so much. Here's the review from "Dakota Brown." Be warned of some spoilers going in...
Harry - Just got out of a screening of 'I am Legend.' Meh. If you saw the trailer, or even the TV spots, then you already saw everything even remotely cool in this movie. The Fresh Prince drives only Ford cars. Hunts deer in New York. Loses his quarry to Aslan. Takes off his shirt. Bathes his dog. Talks to mannequins (none of whom - sadly - turn into Kim Catrall). And he cries a lot. There's definitely some watch-through-fingers stuff when Big Willie Style chases his heedless hunting dog into some catacombs and finds (HUGE FUCKING SPOILER) the Drac Pack! Shoot! Run! Cry! Rinse and repeat. Our hero spends his spare time in his basement lab trying to cure vampirism; things having apparently progressed way past the point where mere education and condom distribution will have any impact. ***SPOILER*** At the end, the survivors seem to somehow wind up in that walled Thomas-Kincaide village from Kevin Costner's 'The Postman.' The shittiest thing is, I read Protosevich's script way back when it was set in San Francisco and Arnold was supposedly going to play Neville and I remember thinking that early draft really popped off the page. In that version, I think Protosevich called his vampires 'hemocytes' or something. And I remember they were kind of Orc-like. They had this whole post-human, tribal culture, complete with war drums and shit. And Patient Zero was like this vampire Genghis Khan and it fucking rocked. Well, all the originality of Protosevich's script - and much of the punch of Matheson's novel - is long gone from this movie. It's not that this iteration sucks, not exactly. It's just ... neutered somehow. Watered down and not totally coherent. I don't know if Will Smith is to blame, or Akiva Goldsman (one of the most overrated scribes in the business if you ask me), or some chickenshit executive along the way. Too many chiefs maybe. Where's Chuck Heston when you need him? At least the Omega Man had some balls. Maybe this is my age showing, but I'm just not a huge fan of mediocre CGI for CGI's sake and I still think nothing would be scarier than an army of extras in Salem's Lot makeup. For some reason, they CGI'd all the fucking vampires into 'I am Legend.' Why? I don't understand their decision. It must have been expensive and it's not at all scary. These vampires look and move a lot like those renegade crash-test dummies in 'I, Robot' - except these guys snarl and snap in their Hulk pants. Bummer. And I was really looking forward to this one too. If you use this, call me Dakota Brown.
