Thursday, May 29, 2008

"What the hell are you doing out here, Fred? Fred, if you're real, you better tell me right now!"

I Am Legend, 2007. Three Stars.

I don't know why I was expecting to be floored by this movie. It was all right though.

So to recap: I watched The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man before seeing this movie so I can compare all three. In this one, I thought it was cool that Robert Neville was driving through the city hunting animals for food. I liked that more than Robert Neville in The Omega Man just shooting up bad guys and looking cool, and Robert Morgan in The Last Man on Earth just going down to the store to get his groceries.

I've noticed that in all three of these movies, the reason for this crazy-ass virus that turns people into living dead-ish creatures has been changed to fit in with the time period the movie's made in. So in I Am Legend, it's The Cure For Cancer that goes awry and kills off humanity. I thought that was kind of stupid.

The character study of Robert Neville is really great, and I like how the issues of depression and loneliness were portrayed. And the doggie is cute! I'm so happy that he had a friend, and I think having a little "sidekick" to be able to talk to is a more interesting way to understand the main character's thoughts and feelings, rather than having a forced dialog among inanimate objects (a la The Omega Man), though I still also like the inner dialog in The Last Man on Earth.

I HATED the CGI in this movie. The undead former humans looked very crappy. It's so distracting and it almost ruins the movie. I liked the baddies in The Omega Man much more, and I wish the creators of this movies followed in their footsteps by using real actors and makeup. It would have been cooler to watch and potentially much scarier.

Also, apparently bad things never happen in Vermont, so if there's ever a world-wide catastrophe, head there.

Will Smith is so excellent in this. I love that he is in so many sci-fi movies. Yeah some of them haven't been that great, but it's still awesome that he's a little contemporarily prevalent in a movie genre that I'm crazy about. I grew up with him on TV as "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air"; his bright clothes, funky music, and sassafrass can-do attitude was very attractive and inspirational to bored middle class white female 2nd grader Chrissy. I bought the "Homebase" tape and listened to it endlessly (I was particularly partial to their version of "Ring My Bell"). But then he grew up and made music that I just couldn't stand. But when he started acting in movies (let's forget about the songs he did for some of them, even though I must admit I unfortunately get "Men in Black" stuck in my head sometimes. Why oh why??), he started getting kind of cool again. Way to go, Will!

My recommendation is to see this movie if the opportunity comes up, but don't go out of your way.