Logically, This Is A Typical Summer Movie
As far as summer movies go, this is a good one. But as a regular movie, it is not. The action comes big, and the overall story is quite good, but the acting is flat and the dialogue is just plain awful. It feels like I've seen this movie before, only with different actors and a slightly different plot. Which is the case for most summer movies. But when the plot is interesting as this, it's a shame when it is wasted in such a typical medium.
The year is 2035, and the world now uses robots for those everyday tasks, like walking the dogs, picking up the garbage and helping with dinner. When the lead scientist for USR (US Robotics) is found dead by apperant suicide on the ground floor of the massive headquarters, Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) is called to figure out what went wrong. The movie does not hesitate to show Spooner's distrust for robots, though they are governed by three laws and prevent them from harming humans. The movie also does not hesitate to plant that seed of distrust in the viewer's mind as well, and you've seen what happens from the trailers and previews.
Therein lays the biggest problem with the movie. Too much of it was shown in the trailer. By the time the opening credits role around, you know the robots are "evil" and are planning to revolt. This is a huge shame, as it spoils what could have been one of the biggest movie twists in years. It begins as a simple mystery story, but eventually plots of conspiracy, revolution and what it means to be intelligent pop up, and it makes you think much more than the average summer fare.
Unfortunately, as usual, the story and characters are abandoned for action scenes, which are quite good. There are a few dynamic camera swoops, that while they do not surpass the grace of Spider-Man 2, they highlight the action in a very unique way. Of course, each one of these scenes is cancelled out with the use of bullet time. Let it go already, unless you're going to do something different with it. Will Smith, normally enthusiastic with a large presence on screen, seems lethargic. Smith wasn't meant to play boring, laid back detectives. The louder he is, with more one-liners, the better. Here, most of his jokes are terrible, but that isn't his fault. It just doesn't seem like Will Smith, with the exception of a less than inspired, but cool, chase scene, and the scene in which he explain his distrust for robots.
There isn't really anything unique to the film, and there isn't anything that hasn't been spoiled by the trailer. Hopefully directors will learn from this mistake, just like M. Night Shymalan did. He was criticized for making the aliens too obvious in Signs. And now, everyone wants to know what the creature is for his next film, The Village. I, Robot just doesn't have enough to separate itself from the rest of the summer to make it a good movie. Perhaps if Smith were just a little more charismatic, it could have been better, but as it stands, it's no Independence Day.