I Am Legend Review

My first thought when I first saw the trailer for "I Am Legend" was, "great, another Will Smith blockbuster extravaganza, whoop-de-doo". Then I saw more on the movie and it looked a lot more interesting than I had originally thought. I got to see the movie recently and I was surprised that it really wasn't a typical, mind-numbing blockbuster at all. It had some very interesting ideas, too bad it was already covered in a much better movie.

Basically, "I Am Legend" is a lot like "28 Days Later" with some of the worst CGI since my last review. I'm having a really hard time lately with the crappy computer effects being used in movies. This movie really could have been good if it weren't for the cartoon-like characters.

The characters in question are a horde of vampire like humanoids that chase Will Smith and his trusty dog all around a barren, empty New York City. When a cancer cure brings disastrous side-effects in the form of a virus, the world is almost completely decimated by the outcome. The only person left on earth, or so he thinks, is Robert Neville (Smith), a scientist that helped manufacture the doomed cure. He is one of few people who were immune to the virus and spends his days hunting deer in his sports car and talking to mannequins. At night, he locks himself in his apartment outfitted with steel barricades to keep whatever lurks outside from getting in. It's quieter moments, like when he's walking through the empty streets of New York, that prove to be the best scenes in the movie. Once the action sets in and you get to see the monsters up close, the movie begins to lose any and all momentum. They're incredibly distracting to the point of taking you completely out of the movie. And in a movie in which the story revolves around only one character throughout, it's a fatal flaw. The infected creeps aren't even really scary, and the movie relies on cheap, loud noises in order to get it's thrills from the audience.

I tried to find things that were good in the movie, including the performance of Will Smith, but as much as he tries, he's still the same guy always punching aliens in the face come summertime to me. It's hard to see him as anything other than that.

Don't read on if you don't want to know anything about the ending...

The ending also left me very disappointed in that it takes the road you'd expect in a big-budget movie like this one. It would have been refreshing to see an ending that didn't tie everything up so neatly. Sometimes disasters don't have happy endings, and they're more entertaining that way. After all, isn't that why we see these type of movies? I personally like to feel that real sense of dread that goes with seeing major cities being destroyed by robots, volcanoes or by other supernatural means. And I don't need to have someone always save the day, I have reality to let me know it's all fiction.