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If you took the look of Minority Report, the existential questions of A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) and threw them in a blender with chapters from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Star Wars - Episode Two: Attack of the Clones, and Blade Runner … then asked Will Smith to combine his characters from Men in Black, Bad Boys and Enemy of the State … you'd come up with something a lot like Alex Proyas's latest film I, Robot.

Smith is famous for showing up in July with blockbuster action films. Usually he arrives on July 4, but this year he's a few weeks late. The extra time did not help. Proyas's movie is flashy, fast-paced, and the story is promising, but the script, by Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind, Batman Forever), feels sorely undercooked and the special effects range from decent to severely unconvincing. Smith looks lonely and stranded throughout the film—he's the only interesting human character. Everyone else seems designed to make him look smart, and they do that by saying unintelligent, dull, or merely expositional things.

It's too bad. The story sets us up to consider important questions about humankind's technological ambitions, the definition of personhood, the tendency of the masses to believe what the media or the government tell them, and the need for democratic people to stand up against powers that deceive them. As a result, the movie's more memorable moments become forgettable, overpowered by glossy but routine adventure sequences. You can almost hear the studio whispering in Proyas's ear: "More chases! More guns! More explosions! Less talk!" Perhaps the most unsettling thing about the film is the fact that a story about subversive technology and media would employ product placement so unapologetically. The Audi, JVC, and Converse logos are so prominent they could qualify as commercial breaks in the film.

My full review is at Looking Closer.

Peter T. Chattaway (Christianity Today Movies) explains that this is not Asimov's I, Robot: "The key issue here is whether human safety is ultimately the highest good, and in this, the film completely turns Asimov's vision on its head—and justifiably so, I think. For an atheist like Asimov, it seems benevolent machines were almost a substitute for God—potentially all-powerful beings who would not allow evil if they could help it, and who would use their supremely logical minds to save us from ourselves. I, Robot, however, suggests it would be a nightmare if humanity ever lost control of its fate like that." He describes the film as "not entirely sure what it wants to say, or what it wants to do. Like the robots in Asimov's stories, it is caught between conflicting impulses, and it ends up paralyzed."

Michael Elliott (Movie Parables) says, "The filmmakers borrowed one of Asimov's titles, the name of one of his central characters, and the three laws of robotics that govern his robot stories. They then ignored everything else that Asimov has to offer in order to make the same special-effects-happy action movie that the Hollywood machine churns out every summer. Those expecting an intelligent, thoughtful treatment on the moral and ethical questions Asimov explores in his stories will be disappointed."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) agrees that it bears "only the slightest thematic resemblance to the short stories." He concludes, "For a popcorn movie, it navigates some surprisingly thought-provoking terrain, though many of its ruminations about artificial intelligence and the ensoulment of technology remain philosophical carrots, dangled tantalizingly but never fully explored."

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July (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48