FILM REVIEW OF ''I, ROBOT" (2004)

Rule # 1: Hollywood shouldn't make some books into movies.

Take, for example, science fiction author Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot."  This is a classic collection of cautionary short stories about the unforeseen complications in a robot's logic as it struggles to obey the three laws of robotics. Even when the robots appeared insane, Asimov was careful to show that by the lights of the robot's "positronic brains," they are behaving logically.

Rule # 2: Movies with multiple stories don't make millions.

Too many characters.  Too many ideas.  Too much originality.  Too much segmentation.  Consequently, when Hollywood lays its hands on literary legends like Asimov, they dumb down his work.  In the Will Smith mystery-thriller "I, Robot," Australian director Alex Proyas of "The Crow," Oscar-winning "Beautiful Mind" scenarist Akiva Goldsman and "Final Fantasy" scribe Jeff Vintar have retained the three laws of robotics.  Unfortunately, they have turned an otherwise literary classic into a formulaic, action-paced, paint-by-the-numbers, potboiler about an heroic, wise-cracking Chicago cop in the year 2035 who abhors robots. 

"I, Robot" (** OUT OF ****) opens with the three laws of robots.  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.

An alarm clock awakens divorced homicide detective Del Spooner (Will Smith of "Bad Boys") to another wonderful day. After a shower scene designed to display Smith's buff body, especially his curiously scarred "Rambo" pectorals, the filmmakers have our swaggering stereotypical lone wolf hero don his ghetto street clothes, unpack a vintage pair of 2004 Converse All-Star sneakers, and cruise off to his first crime scene of the day in his tricked out Audi.  The headquarters of the U.S. Robotics Corporation--a Microsoft-type company—towers against the skyline of Chicago.  U.S. Robotics plans to put a robot in every home.  The company boasts that the ratio will be one robot per five humans.  An unexpected tragedy occurs to threaten this massive robotic roll-out. Apparently, U.S.R.'s chief robot designer, Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell of "Babe"), has committed suicide.  The visionary scientist hurled himself through his office window and fell hundreds of feet to the lobby.  Spooner learns that Lanning had requested him specifically, so Del could listen to a message Lanning recorded for him on a preprogrammed hologram. Initially, Lanning's cryptic remarks mystify Del.

When he visits Lanning's office, he discovers that the good doctor couldn't have jumped through the window. Del tries to break the window next to the window that Lanning shattered.  He barely makes a dent when he smashes a chair against it.  U.S. Robotics scientist, Dr. Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan of “Coyote Ugly) is assigned to escort Spooner around the premises.  No sooner does Del realize that the killer may still be in the room than the killer surprises him and escapes.

Eventually, Del captures the robot and interrogates him.  Before he can get far, U.S. Robotics' CEO Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood of "Thirteen Days") storms into the police station.  He demands the return of his property.  Robertson reminds Del that the authorities cannot charge robots with murder.  Not only have robots never posed a threat to humans, but also only humans can be charged with homicide.  Inevitably, Del's world-weary boss, Lieutenant John Bergin (Chi McBride of "Gone In 60 Seconds"), chews him out for crying 'robot' every time something happens to him. Del remains far from convinced, however, about the innocence of robots.  He bears a grudge against them.  During an accident, a truck rammed both his vehicle and another car with a 12-year old girl inside.  Both cars sank into a river.  A passing robot witnessed the accident and dived in to rescue Del. Our protagonist told the robot to save the little girl instead, so he feels guilty about her death and despises robots.

Gee, doesn't this sound familiar? Like a movie from the 1980s? A rebellious but maimed cop battling a corporation with a dark secret.  Hey, didn't Tom Selleck do something like that in the 1984 epic "Runaway?" Or what about 1982's "Blade Runner?" Or "Westworld," where the robots cannot kill humans either.  Del spends the rest of "I, Robot's" predictable 115 minutes trying to prove to everybody that robots are dangerous. He worries especially because his mother (Adrian Ricard of "Bulworth") has won a robot in lottery. Meanwhile, despite all this horrible publicity, Robertson plans to market a new line of robots, and he wants Del off his back permanently. Of course, hard-headed as Del is, he doesn't take no for an answer, even when Bergin takes his badge and suspends him from the force.

Basically, aside from his charismatic performance, Will Smith's futuristic detective doesn't appear too far removed from his wealthy playboy cop in the "Bad Boys" franchise.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have a sidekick like Martin Lawrence to take up the slack in this occasionally exciting but largely superficial sci-fi saga. Not even his quips seem catchy.  Smith spouts lines like: "Does believing you're the last sane man on the planet make you crazy? 'Cause if that's the case, maybe I am.”  Probably his best line, and that isn't saying much, is: "Somehow 'I told you so' just doesn't quite say it." "I, Robot" looks cool, if you don't think about some of the gaping plot holes. Wait until you see what Del's secret weapon is. Talk about a cop-out!  If you think about it, Del qualifies as a cyborg.  The villainous robots aren’t intimidating.   Meanwhile, two action sequences, a careening vehicular chase scene in a freeway tunnel and a demolition robot that destroys a mansion with Del in it, stand out from everything else thing.  Despite its plea for tolerance, which was handled better in "Bicentennial Man," "I, Robot" breaks no new ground in the robot genre. 

FILM REVIEW OF "MEN IN BLACK 3" (2012)

“Men in Black 3” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) may be Tommy Lee Jones’ last “Men in Black” movie.  The Oscar winning “Fugitive” actor makes what amounts to a glorified cameo in the second sequel.  He shows up for about a quarter of an hour during the first act of this amusing, but tonally uneven farce and then disappears until about the last ten minutes of act three. Presumably, Jones wasn’t agile enough to impersonate himself as a younger man in act two of this lively sequel. Consequently, “Men in Black” director Barry Sonnenfeld cast Josh Brolin as a younger Agent K for the contrived time travel plot in “Tropic Thunder” scenarist Etan Cohen’s inventive but convoluted screenplay.  Things seem considerably more realistic in “Men in Black 3” as a vindicative villain takes advantage of time travel to trip back to July 1969 and knock off Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) mere moments before the historic Apollo Moon launch.  Meaning, since Agent K would no longer exist, Agent K couldn’t have recruited Agent J.  Remember, in “Men in Black” (1997), Agent K recruited NYPD detective James Darrell Edwards III (Will Smith of “Independence Day”) for his fleet-footed pursuit of an alien. “Men in Black 3” takes some outrageous liberties with time travel that haven’t been handled in such a zany fashion.

Basically, “Men in Black 3” resembles the classic fantasy film “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946) where James Stewart learns about the chaos that will ensue if he commits suicide. Unlike the James Stewart hero, Agent K either must survive a murder attempt on his life or chaos will engulf the Earth.  A buffed-up Mick Jigger look-alike bad man named Boris the Animal has dreamed about killing Agent K.  Bad-tempered Boris is an alien who has goggles instead of eyeballs, gnarly-looking teeth, a Darth Vader baritone voice, and multi-toed feet, and harbors a deadly crab-like critter in the palm of his hand.  Boris likes to discharge deadly thorns from his hand, and his trademark line of dialogue is "Let's agree to disagree." Unless Agent J can run interference for Agent K, the world as we know it is doomed.  It seems that Agent K was instrumental in averting an alien invasion of Earth with a small gizmo that gives off an emerald glow back in 1969.  He had to plant the device atop the Apollo Moon rocket so it could be boosted into space.  Of course, Boris both before and after the Lunar Max escape turns up to complicate Agent K’s renewed efforts to save the planet.  They battle like titans atop the gantry.

 “Men in Black” opens in Lunar Max, a maximum security prison on the Moon, built to confine the worst scum in the galaxy. Beastly Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement of “Dinner for Schmucks”) thwarts an army of heavily armed guards with the help of a woman carrying a pink cake, and breaks out of the slammer.  Just when the guards think they have Boris cornered, this larger-than-life villain surprises them with a stunt that disperses the guards and staggers the imagination.  Now, freed after 40 years of captivity, Boris decides to pay back the man who not only put him behind bars but also blew off part of his left arm.  Of course, Boris’ quarry is none other than resourceful Agent K.  Agent K's only regret is that he didn't ice Boris when he had the opportunity.  Mysteriously, Agent K has vanished without a trace, and Agent J gets the shock of his life at MIB Headquarters when he learns that Agent K has been dead for 40 years.

 The original “Men in Black” offered a pleasant change-of-pace for science fiction film fans.  Essentially, this silly, “Far Side” type satire cleverly combined the police procedural TV show “Dragnet” with the “Star Wars” cantina scene.  Sonnenfeld has helmed all three “Men in Black” movies.  Along the way, he has made some changes.  Not only does Sonnenfeld eliminate Zed, but he also has replaced Zed with a younger woman.  Essentially, Zed (Rip Torn) has died, and Agent K delivers a cryptic but dispassionate eulogy.  Agent O (Emma Thompson) replaces Zed. Later, we learn that Agent K and Agent O were romantically involved. Unfortunately, the filmmakers fail to make the threat of a standard-issue, alien invasion of Earth plot seem exciting.  Sonnenfeld and Cohen do everything to raise the stakes in this outlandish sequel.  Although some changes are obvious and accounted for, others are not so clear-cut, especially the liberties that they take with time travel.

 The biggest change involves the scope of “MIB 3.”  Although the adversary is an alien, little about him prompts laughs.  The decision to go into the past makes "Men in Black 3" different from the previous two films.  Sonnenfeld and Cohen allow Boris to take things right down to the wire.  “Men in Black 3” is the tail chasing the dog, but it is so energetic that you can ignore its lapses in logic.  Brolin and Smith are charismatic enough even when the plot stumbles from one big set-piece to another.  Some critics have skewered the logic of the time travel plot.  How can two characters and their counterparts inhabit the same time and setting without negating their alter-egos?  For that matter, how is it that Agent J can remain a member of the Men in Black if Agent K weren’t around to recruit him?  After Sonnenfeld and Cohen resolve the end-of-the-world plot, they cap off “Men in Black 3” with a hopelessly contrived ending that brings the franchise full circle.  The closure that comes with the return of Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K has an eerie sense of finality. Josh Brolin delivers a brilliant performance as Agent K, and the ambitious plot resembles a sci-fi, James Bond escapade rather than a goofy actioneer.  Happily, “Men in Black 3” boasts some ingenious gadgets, like a motorcycle that consists of one giant wheel that the rider sits inside while driving and jet-packs that resemble chrome-plated Gemini capsules.  Comparatively, “Men in Black 3” surpasses “Men in Black 2,” but lacks the spontaneity of “Men in Black.” 

FILM REVIEW OF "MEN IN BLACK" (1997)

The idea for "Men in Black," the latest alien opus about cracking down on extraterrestrials hiding out on earth, conjures up a galaxy of surreal comic potential. If you're looking for a moderately entertaining, mega-budgeted, "Far Side" farce that vapor locks just shy of "Ghostbusters," "Men in Black" is your ticket. Even if this uneven outer limits comedy doesn't beam you up, its alleged million-dollar-per-minute special effects that infest the plot with a spawn of dorky aliens should impress you. Mind you, nothing in this delightful movie should give you nightmares.  Despite its abundant sight-gags and eye-popping aliens, "Men in Black" frizzles because it relies on the familiar 'oxidize the earth' plot. "Men-In-Black" is a great looking movie hampered by a lame plot. Based on Lowell Cunningham's obscure but sensational Marvel comic from the early 1990s, the story sounds like "Dragnet" meets "Ghostbusters." The subversive but inventive Ed Solomon script struggles to keep a deadpan lid on its diabolical lunacy so its gags will appear twice as funny. Basically, it's the old idea of getting more mileage out of a joke by telling it as if you weren't aware of the humor.

The irreverent "Men in Black" (**1/2 out of ****) humor is so dry and sporadic that it sometimes fails to enthrall. Remember "Dragnet" with its "just the facts, m'am" deadpan humor? You know you're watching a comedy, and you even laugh at what you see. After all, you know these guys are straining to be hilarious. But they're not funny enough all the time to make you forget they're struggling so hard to make you laugh. Solomon wastes too much time integrating Will Smith's character into the action and not enough time incorporating Linda Fiorentino's character. The story never generates any genuine suspense, just a lot of pastel slime. The ending is outrageously implausible even by the wacky elastic standards of this fantasy. Nevertheless, "Men in Black" doesn't wear out its welcome.

Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith impersonate a couple of laced-strait Federal agents who work for a ultra-hush, hush agency known only as INS Division 6. Headquartered out of sight in Manhattan, INS 6 licenses, monitors, and polices all alien activity on Earth. According to the movie, about fifteen-hundred aliens reside on the planet in a state of apolitical harmony. Any alien critter that goes AWOL gets busted by these INS 6 dudes.

When we first meet J (Will Smith of "Hancock"), he is fleet-footed NYPD detective James Darrel Edwards, III, who has experienced a close encounter with a nimble dude in a green jacket. INS 6 recruits him because he nearly caught the alien. (If Will Smith doesn't watch out, he is going to be type-cast as the John Wayne of alien butt kickers.) INS 6 chief Zed (Rip Torn) teams J with veteran alien buster K (Tommy Lee Jones of "Rolling Thunder"). Even if you can tolerate the long expository build up, the story suffers again because these characters never develop the camaraderie of the "Ghostbusters." After a UFO crashes into his Chevrolet pick-up truck, a creepy redneck farmer, Edgar (Vincent D'Onofrio), goes gunning for the aliens. They're a bunch of murderously mutant cockroaches. They zap Edgar instead and take control of his body. (This scene recalls the Stephen King episode in the 1982 movie "Creepshow.") Edgar stumbles through the rest of the movie like a zombie. He's on a weird quest to kill two Arkillian aliens disguised as human and pinch a trinket hanging around a cat's neck that contains the galaxy. When he gets it, the Arkillian threat to atomize the planet unless our heroes can recover the bauble.

What we don't learn about the aliens, the filmmakers are happy to show us. Aliens galore infest "Men in Black." They resemble mutants sprung from the island of Dr. Seuss. None are particularly threatening, but some are ugly and squid-like. The scene where J assists a mother alien in birth is pretty funny, but it doesn't match the impact of the Billy Crystal calf delivery in "City Slickers." Juveniles will drool over the flashy gadgets. One device called a "neuralizer" resembles a tire gauge crossed with a pin-light. Our heroes use it to erase the short term memory of any spectators that they encounter in the line of duty. Remember, we're not supposed to know that the aliens walk among us. Our heroes don their cool looking Ray Bans to dampen the effect on them. The Ray Bans are already available in stores, but you'll probably have to wait for the chrome plated guns. Judging from its opening weekend haul of $50 million plus dollars, "Men in Black" should at least inspire a sequel as well as merchandising out the universe. There's a cartoon series already in the works.

Director Barry Sonnenfeld pulls out all stops. The hokey dragon-fly in the opening scene sets the smart aleck tone for the movie. One of the best scenes is the jewelry store confrontation which the movie makers have already given up in the previews of "Men in Black." The witty use of tabloid newspapers to tell the real truth is ironic, and the real story behind the New York's World Fair is a hoot! Sonnenfeld keeps the light weight action moving at light speed. Sometimes the movie zips by so quickly they you have trouble keeping up with it. But "Men in Black" lacks the bizarre finesse of Sonnenfeld's two "Adams Family" movies. No complaints about the casting. Tom Lee Jones of "The Fugitive" delivers the kind of stoic performance that would put Jack Webb to shame. Jones's grim-faced, buttoned-down expressions would be the envy of Detective Sergeant Friday. Jones proves himself a master comedian with impeccable timing again and again in "Men in Black." William Smith of "Independence Day" blends his streetwise, Ebonic, home boy charm with the sartorial elegance of his character as an interesting contrast to Jones' tight-lipped stooge. These co-stars work well together, except that their cardboard characters never evolve in the two frantic days covered in the movie.

"Men in Black" misfires more often than hits. You exit the movie theatre dazzled by the seamless special effects, but you may find that the dry, off-beat humor as memorable as a flash of light from a neutralizer.

FILM REVIEW OF ''I AM LEGEND''

Hollywood has never had much luck adapting science fiction author Richard Matheson's cult 1954 novel "I Am Legend" successfully to the screen. Iconic horror movie star Vincent Price headlined the first version; the Italian-lensed "The Last Man on Earth" (1964) ranked as an austere, but depressing widescreen, black & white epic with vampire/zombies as his antagonists. Call them zompires! Price impersonated a valiant scientist, Robert Morgan, with an acquired immunity to a deadly virus that had devastated mankind. Morgan struggled desperately not only to survive acute loneliness but also to cure the survivors. Full-frame copies of this opus are available everywhere in DVD bargain box sets. Not-surprisingly, Price perished in the end.

Charlton Heston retooled the role in the 1971 remake, "The Omega Man," released by Warner Brothers. Heston turned immunologist Robert Neville into a brawny, bare-chested, romantic, action stud hero who cavorted in a blue flight suit with a dress uniform cap complete with scrambled eggs on the visor. Watch "The Omega Man" and see if Neville doesn't resemble a Marvel Comics character. Naturally, Heston brought the messianic allure that he had gained from "The 10 Commandments" and "Ben-Hur" to the role. Along the way, Heston's Neville indulged in one of the first interracial big-screen romances with African-American actress Rosalind Cash. An army of heavily robed, non-vampiric mutants led by Matthias (Anthony Zerbe) triumphed over him, and he died tragically as a misunderstood Christ figure.

Will Smith fares even worse in the third and least well-done version, "I Am Legend" (* out of ****) which finally uses the original title of Matheson's novel. Essentially, Smith imitates the Heston hero as a weapons reliant action hero/virologist. They differ in how they contend with loneliness. Heston played chess with a bust of Julius Caesar and fed images of himself via a surveillance camera onto a big-screen television. Smith's Neville dresses up mannequins at a local video rental store and converses with them when he selects a movie. Unlike both Price and Heston, Smith doesn't enjoy a post-apocalyptic romance. Instead of female companionship, Smith has to settle for a German shepherd; canine lovers are warned ahead of time to expect the worst. Even when a woman, Anna (Alice Braga of "City of God"), does show up near the end, our hero doesn't take the time to sweep her off her feet.

Generally, the problem with all three movies is that the star has to bear the movie on his shoulders for the brunt of the action. Remember that hideous Tom Hanks' movie "Castaway?" Half of "I Am Legend" looks like "Castaway" with Will Smith performing monologues devoid of humor. Sadly, despite a strong performance, Smith has to deal with adversaries that neither Price nor Heston contended with—namely, colorless, chrome-domed, computer-generated cannibals. "I Am Legend" forfeits any semblance of dramatic impact, much as "I, Robot" did, with its cartoon-like CGI villains. Smith wages an eternal war against video game antagonists who cannot speak, making them dim-witted, lowest-common-denominator dolts.

"I Am Legend" opens on an ironic note. Scientists have discovered a cure for cancer. Things go incredibly amiss, however, and Dr. Krippen (an unbilled Emma Thompson of "Sense and Sensibility") winds up unleashing a man-made virus in the year 2009 that transforms humanity into homicidal mutants that plunder and destroy everything in sight. Incidentally, these mutants don't appear until midway in the movie after scenarists Mark Protosevich of "Poseidon" and Akiva Goldman of "Batman & Robin" have established Smith's character and his predicament. The filmmakers rely on occasional flashbacks to fracture that storyline and show how Smith became the last man on Earth. We learn that his wife (Salli Richardson of TV's "Eureka") and daughter (Smith's real-life daughter Willow) died in a helicopter collision around the same time that the military quarantined Manhattan Island and sealed off access to it. The military destroy the two landmark Big Apple bridges, but Neville (Will Smith) vows to remain at ground zero and devise a cure.

Three years later, in 2012, Neville and his dog venture outside by day to search for non-infected survivors as well as to forage for food and lock themselves up at night. In an early scene, Neville hunts for fresh meat by pursuing escaped zoo animals through the cluttered, weed-choked canyons of Manhattan in a red Ford Mustang with a high powered rifle. He watches old television shows that he has recorded before the apocalypse while he eats. The mutants themselves are not very interesting. In "Last Man on Earth," the mutants were vampire/zombies that besieged the hero's house at night. In "The Omega Man," the villains were the equivalent of albino Klansmen that terrorized the streets after dark and clashed constantly with Neville.

Like the previous versions, "I Am Legend" delivers a dour, downbeat ending that will bum you out beyond belief. The special effects are shoddy and superficial; the villains emerge as a mob of one-dimensional, head-banging morons, and the hero degenerates into an ignoble, unsympathetic, atheistic lout. There is nothing exciting or suspenseful about our hero's late-night encounter with the mutants on the docks where he uses his SUV as a weapon to smash them. Even more implausible is the way that he gets out of this cliffhanger confrontation. "Constantine" director Francis Lawrence provides several startling, gotcha-by-the-gullet, scare scenes that will frighten the squeamish, but seasoned gorehounds won't find anything different or dazzling about this drivel.

Will Smith's track record with science fiction is faltering badly these days. "I Am Legend" is nowhere near as memorable or entertaining as either "Independence Day" or his "Men in Black" movies. Instead, "I Am Legend" is legendarily lame!