Speak up mate, you're a little husky! Ahahaha...oh, you've heard that one?
Speak up mate, you're a little husky! Ahahaha...oh, you've heard that one?
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I will lay my cards on the table: I am a big fan of Isaac Asimov, and 'I, Robot' was the first book of his I read. I knew that the film was based only loosely on the book - after all, it's a collection of short stories rather than a novel - and I went prepared to judge it on its own merits. I do believe I failed.
The story is set in a future where robots are as common and essential as cars. When top roboticist Dr Alfred Lanning dies at his workplace, he leaves behind a hologram who will only talk to one man: Detective Del Spooner (I spent the movie labouring under the impression that his name was the rather wussier 'Dale'). His colleagues at U.S. Robotics are adamant that he must have killed himself - but why? What has happened to the CCTV footage of Lanning's room at the time of the incident? Could his death have anything to do with the upcoming launch of the new NS-5 model and accompanying promise of 'a robot in every home'? Why involve Spooner, whose dislike of robots verges on psychosis? And what have robots ever done to him anyway?
Unsurprisingly, Spooner doesn't take to the staff of U.S. Robotics. Presided over by a robot brain, VIKI, who controls the running of the building and makes corporate decisions, they seem like robots themselves: cold, emotionless, polite. But what really gets Del's goat is that they seem to value robots above human lives - particularly the robopsychologist Dr Susan Calvin. They certainly won't buy in to the idea of Del treating a robot as a murder suspect; a killer mechanoid would not only be bad publicity, but is impossible under the Three Laws of Robotics.
The Three Laws, as everyone keeps reminding Spooner, are as follows:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
All robots are powered by a positronic
brain programmed with the unbreakable Three Laws.Yet in spite of this, Spooner soon finds himself being chased through the streets of Chicago by NS-5 robots who apparently have murder on their minds. There are never any witnesses and the robots conveniently disappear before the cops arrive on the scene to find Del in another mess. Since everyone knows a robot cannot harm a human, it's obvious to his colleagues and the U. S. Robotics staff that the detective is becoming unhinged.
An extra piece in the puzzle is one NS-5 who doesn't behave quite like the others. The pet project of Dr Lanning, who named him 'Sonny', this unit is running a modified program and it seems that Lanning was trying to teach him to have human emotions. A dangerous thing to do with a robot - will Sonny behave like a good human, or an evil one? Sonny's journey of self-discovery is an important part of the mystery surrounding U. S. Robotics and the NS-5.
'I, Robot' is rated 12A, presumably due to scary robot content. I remember being terrified by 'Short Circuit' when I was eight, but today's kids seem to be made of tougher stuff and I reckon children aged 10 and up would enjoy the film without too many subsequent nightmares. The script and the storyline are nothing special, but a capable cast and some excellent special effects move the film along nicely and make it fun to watch.
Will Smith plays Del Spooner. He is, admittedly, very good at portraying this kind of character. Unfortunately, the character doesn't fit the movie. His wisecracking jars with the way the other characters talk and behave, and I was often left thinking "Oh, you rude, ignorant pig!" rather than "Oh, you charming, maverick rogue!" It looks as if Will Smith was crammed into the film to give it appeal. I would have liked his screen time reduced to give the rest of the cast a chance.
He has some good lines, though, and his acting can't be faulted whether he's being Angry Cop, Kindly Grandson or Brooding Angsty Man. Del's appreciation of retro goods appealed to me a great deal, speaking as someone who obstinately clings to a record player and collection of LPs - though I couldn't help noticing that his love of early 21st century hi-fi equipment and Converse All-Stars provided a very convenient opportunity for product placement.
The rest of the cast are able performers, when they can get a word in edgeways. Chi McBride as Del's rotund, long-suffering Chief and Adrian Ricard as his pie-providing granny are stereotypical but enjoyable characters. James Cromwell, familiar from recent episodes of 'Six Feet Under', makes the most of his few lines as the deceased Lanning with a calm, understated delivery (jokes about his two-dimensional performance aside).
Alan Tudyk provides the voice for Sonny, and the actor's movements were also used by the animation team as the basis for the robot's. He manages to speak his lines in a way that's unmistakably robotic but uncomfortably human, so that talk of emotions and dreams seems believable coming from the mouth of a machine.
Robopsychologist Susan Calvin is played by Bridget Moynahan. Another stereotype: the prudish, uptight yet attractive woman whose tough exterior is gradually melted by the hero's charms. Moynahan is schoolmarmishly severe at the beginning of the film, and her steely contempt contrasts well with Smith's easygoing insolence. Unfortunately, it was when she made her appearance that my attempt to ignore the sound of Isaac Asimov spinning in his grave choked and died.
Dr Susan Calvin. One of the strongest female characters in science fiction, and a great favourite of mine. She is intelligent, unemotional and the greatest robopsychologist in the Solar System. She certainly would not need a cynical cop to help her solve a robotic mystery. If Calvin was to be included in the movie at all, she should have been the star. Instead she is sidelined, with a role that is expository at best and embarrassingly damsel-in-distress at worst.
Moving swiftly on before I give myself an ulcer: the sets and special effects. These were gorgeous indeed, and I hope they win an award as fervently as I hope the scriptwriter won't.
The skyscraping needle of the U. S. Robotics building dominates the Chicago skyline. Its interior is easily the most fabulous piece of scenery; a skyscraper of chrome and glass, with video panels lining the walls and a huge statue of a robot reaching from lobby to mezzanine. Meanwhile, on the streets of the city, life seems to go on much the same as it does in 2004 - except for the robots.
There are robots everywhere, mingling easily with the humans as they go about their tasks. Both their design and their interaction with the flesh and blood castmembers are a triumph of CGI. They look human enough for us to treat them sympathetically, alien enough to cause a frisson of unease. At first we see rather clunky and friendly-looking androids; then the NS-5s - the iPod of the robot world, if you will - are rolled out. Their gleaming white curves are an obvious improvement on the earlier models, yet they are faintly sinister in appearance; perfect, identical and quick-moving. Their bodies are slim and delicate-looking, but every now and then we are reminded that they possess superhuman strength.
However, few people these days go to the cinema purely to see the latest leap in computer-generated magic. We want substance as well as style, and 'I, Robot' fails to deliver. Peel away the surface gloss and we have Will Smith beating up the bad guys, with a little roboschmaltz from Sonny on the side.
The film is an uncomfortable marriage between two genres of robot story: what Asimov himself termed 'Robot-as-Menace' and 'Robot-as-Pathos'. The menace is nothing we haven't seen in the cinema before, although with better special effects; it's nowhere near as chilling as HAL's behaviour in '2001'. As for the pathos - frankly, I was more moved by the episode of 'Red Dwarf' in which Kryten is due to be replaced by a newer model and shut down.
'I, Robot' falls foul of every cinematic robot cliché imaginable, and it is this, more than the butchery of Susan Calvin's character, more than the introduction of the Three Laws only to ride roughshod over them, that I feel would have upset the grand old man of sci-fi. In his introduction to 1982's story collection 'The Complete Robot', Asimov describes the kind of robot story he read as a teenager in the 1930s:
'Such stories were a mixture of "clank-clank" and "aarghh" and "There are some things man was not meant to know". After a while, they palled dreadfully and I couldn't stand them.'
I know the feeling, Isaac.
[www.irobotmovie.com]
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Production Year: 2007 - Science Fiction - Director: Francis Lawrence - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Dash Mihok, Will Smith, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith
As paranoid cop Del Spooner, Will Smith displays both his trademark quips and some ... more
impressive pectoral muscles inI, Robot. Only Spooner suspects that the robots that provide the near future with menial labor are going to turn on mankind--he's just not ...
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As paranoid cop Del Spooner, Will Smith displays both his trademark quips and some ... more
impressive pectoral muscles inI, Robot. Only Spooner suspects that the robots that provide the near future with menial labor are going to turn on mankind--he's just not ...
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As paranoid cop Del Spooner, Will Smith displays both his trademark quips and some ... more
impressive pectoral muscles inI, Robot. Only Spooner suspects that the robots that provide the near future with menial labor are going to turn on mankind--he's just not ...
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As paranoid cop Del Spooner, Will Smith displays both his trademark quips and some ... more
impressive pectoral muscles inI, Robot. Only Spooner suspects that the robots that provide the near future with menial labor are going to turn on mankind--he's just not ...
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Advantages: incredible effects, realistic robots, Alex Proyas back in the director's chair Disadvantages: the mass product placement, the injustice towards Isaac Asimov's source material
DarkMark 09.02.2005 (09.02.2005)
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Review of I, Robot (DVD)
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Sep 8th, 2004
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