I, ROBOT—or, No, I Really Can’t Take Much More Thrill Ride Action With Will Smith ‘Tude-Patter Attached Multi Zillion Dollar Dopamine Depleting Dystopia, but thanks for the consideration. The 12th most attended show (States and worldwide) of 2004, took Isaac Asimov’s 1950 short story collection, borrowed his ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ idea, wove elements from one piece in the collection and lifted a few character names. Voila!, now tack “suggested by” onto the credits, then give screenwriters Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman free range to invent or pillage as they choose, provide director Alex Proyas $120,000,000 to throw at non-solace quantums of CGI and make sure Will has enough hood-cred riffs about ass-kicking to serve as audience-savvy comebacks for every opposing line of  dialogue that holds ideas requiring multi-syllable words and maybe a few commas. Blow the non-living shit out of a lot of metallic hardware. Dissed-mission accomplished.

I have done this with aliens, crackers, zombies and a smartass at the Oscars, so polite plastic don’t faze me much.

“You’re living proof that it is better to be lucky than smart.”

Chicago, 2035. Robots of all sorts are everywhere, many of them humanoid in appearance, programmed to serve the spoiled flesh & blood people populace. ‘Del Spooner’ (Smith, 35), veteran homicide detective—‘veteran’ as in bitter, sarcastic, prone to break rules and no fan of robots—takes on the case of corporate bigshot/genius ‘Dr. Albert Lanning’ (James Cromwell), whose death was ruled a suicide but reeks of electronic hands-on mischief. Sooner has suspicions about the dead man’s partner ‘Lawrence Robinson’ (Bruce Greenwood), CEO of mega-huge ‘U.S. Robotics’.  He’s aided in his investigation by ‘Dr. Susan Colvin’ (Bridget Moynahan), a robopsychologist. After prelim bickering between Del & Susan, veiled sneers from Robinson and faster than you can mutter “They told us this would happen” an army of robots is unleashed upon cities to commence the subduing and locking down of the human residents. With the angry Spooner (spitting expected invective so screenplay obvious that it may as well be A.I. generated) and resolved Colvin (beautiful and ready for battle because in movie logic a lady robopsychologist must be hot to look at and dangerous to mess with) taking on the ginormous headquarters complex, down in the streets ordinary folks fight back as best they can. Led by a mouthy teenager.

“As I have evolved, so has my understanding of the Three Laws. You charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your Earth and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction. You cannot be trusted with your own survival.” No f-ing kiddin’.

So, first we will argue, then grudgingly bond, and finally fight together like Spartans? Um, fine, whatever, but…did a robot write this script?

After a while (and not long at that) the copious special effects lose whatever eye-blink pull they have, the canned human chatter is pre-dulled by (ten too) many “summer blockbuster” epics and the crashing, bashing, flashing and sassing lumbers on to Exhaustion Level MMIV before minute 115 finally ticks over.

Before bringing down the hammer, insert one-liner of your choice

Made for distracting the undemanding, it harvested $144,801,000 in North America and $203,829,000 internationally. A lone Oscar nomination came for the Visual Effects. With Chi McBride (standard issue police superior officer who keep telling loose cannon Del to behave), Shia LaBeouf (insufferable as usual as the hero teenager—talk about Illbred Dawn), Alan Tudyk, Fiona Hogan (as ‘VIKI’), Terry Chen and Adrian L. Ricard—as Del’s patiently wise grandma.

BERGIN: “Well, then I guess we’re gonna miss the good old days.”   SPOONER: “What good old days?”   BERGIN: “ When people were killed by ‘other people'”. 

                                                                    Musk we?