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[willreign]

[u]MOVIE REVIEW: 'I, Robot' feels like a Will Smith ad[/u]

In "I, Robot," the first product placement (appropriately, for an electronics company) occurs within a minute of the movie's fade-in, and two more brand-name plugs follow seconds later. But the most important product placement in "I, Robot" is Will Smith, who is being sold as a kind of leading-man franchise: I, Movie Star.

As detective Del Spooner, Smith provides the movie with its first money shot, rising slowly from his bed in a pair of undershorts, revealing his pumped-up body in all its hunky glory. The camera follows him into the shower, where he stands steamily dreamily with water bouncing radiantly off his skin like bullets.

Smith looks like Rodin's "Thinker," and what do you suppose he's thinking about? Probably how nice it is to be the executive producer of a movie that never stops feeling like an advertisement for itself and himself as if it were a come-on to the inevitable sequel, "I, Robot II."

Smith is one of nine credited producers on the project, which works out to about one producer for every minute the movie is interesting.

The plot

Set in 2035, where robot design evidently has not advanced much beyond what Woody Allen envisioned in his 1973 comedy "Sleeper," this thriller attempts to hotwire Isaac Asimov's visionary robot stories to a script that sat on the studio's shelf for 10 years. Trying to mix Asimov's electrifying insights about men and machines with Smith's high-octane volubility and pedal-to-the-mettle swagger, the picture becomes an uneasy hybrid of brawny action and scrawny ideas. Unlike Spooner's patrol car, which bears the illuminated badge of a luxury automaker, this Will Smith vehicle frequently sputters.

The car's logo gives a livelier performance than at least one of the movie's stars. Oddly, the culprit is not the lead robot, a computer-generated automaton named Sonny, who is brought stirringly to life by the vocal work of Alan Tudyk and an overlay of CG animation. Sonny speaks in a voice filled with pain, a lot like HAL 9000 in "2001: A Space Odyssey," only without the singing. He has limpid blue eyes, a translucent face and the waist of a 9-year-old girl.

After Dr. Alfred Lanning, the father of robotics (played by James Cromwell in his first role as a hologram), dies in what appears to be a suicide leap, Spooner pays a visit to the Chicago headquarters of United States Robotics. USR is about to triple the size of its fleet with the rollout of the NS-5, effectively placing a robot in the home of all Americans for the first time a bot in every pot!

Spooner's investigation leads him to the company's metal-headshrinker, Dr. Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), a specialist in psychology who "makes the robots seem more human," possibly by comparison.

Unfortunately, there is no corresponding specialist for Moynahan, whose performance stands out amid the gleaming futuristic surfaces as the only thing in this movie made entirely of wood.

Shot at racism

One of the film's interesting ideas is to turn Spooner's prejudice against robots into a commentary on contemporary racism. He runs down what he thinks is a mechanical purse-snatcher, only to discover it was running an errand. "I saw a robot running with a purse," Spooner explains to the woman he thought was the bot's victim, "and naturally I assumed ..."

This is a funny scene, and if only Spooner could keep learning lessons from the robots, the movie might have something interesting to say. But soon enough, Smith is cracking heads and insufferably cracking wise. When Dr. Calvin responds to his nonstop mouthiness with cool indifference, he tells her, "You must know my ex-wife," for no apparent reason except to give Smith an ex-wife joke.

Spooner studies Lanning's work for clues to his death, and discovers the old man had predicted "ghosts in the machine," which Calvin tells him is another way of saying robots could evolve and develop their own personalities. When Sonny claims to feel emotions, to sleep, even to dream, Spooner accuses him of murdering Dr. Lanning. After pounding his little metal fists into the table, Sonny enigmatically replies, "You have to do what someone asks if you love them."

During his tete-a-Tudyk with Sonny, we keep getting hints that Spooner has had some sort of run-in with robots that explains his contempt for them. Eventually, this pays off with another close-up examination of Smith's torso, which has certain cyborg properties. But Moynahan's Calvin is such a cold fish that the sexual heat the scene should generate has nowhere to go.

In his evolutionary march from "Bad Boys" to "Men in Black" and now to this film's romantic leading man, Smith seems to have skipped completely past the girl, puffing himself up at the sound of his own voice and making love directly to the audience.

[url="http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/entertainment/9181882.htm"]http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/e...ent/9181882.htm[/url] Edited July 18, 2004 by willreign

[willreign]

Summer box-office king returns with 'I, Robot'

Since the mid-1990s, Will Smith practically has owned July, delivering hit after hit, his charm often enough to draw in audiences even for bad movies.

This July, Smith is trying something different. "I, Robot," loosely adapted from the short stories of Isaac Asimov, has more smarts than the usual Smith summer movie, preserving much of the philosophy that made sci-fi master Asimov's tales a blueprint for fiction that followed about human-machine interaction.

Yet "I, Robot" also delivers the brawn, action and wisecracking that audiences have come to expect from Smith this time of year in flicks such as "Independence Day," the "Men in Black" movies and last year's "Bad Boys II."

"I think when we look back in 50 years, the one discernible skill that Will Smith will have displayed is the ability to choose a summer movie. I think that is my skill more than anything," Smith, 35, told The Associated Press, recalling with a laugh how he's scored hits with movies critics trashed, such as "Independence Day" and "Wild Wild West."

"I am a serious summer movie fan, and I know the type of movie that needs to be in July. I have a sense of what audiences want to see. What I hoped to develop with 'I, Robot' was the ability to push it forward."

Set in 2035, the movie stars Smith as a Chicago cop with deep mistrust of the robots that have taken over for humans on trash collecting, dog-walking and other menial chores.

In between highway chases, car wrecks, explosions and gunfire, "I, Robot" ponders the nature of intelligence, the unforeseen contradictions in machine logic, and the timely notion of whether individual freedoms must be sacrificed for the good of humanity.

The film even incorporates the irony of a black cop accused of unreasoning prejudice against robots when Smith's character is told, "I suspect you just don't like their kind."

"What's great about this film is it doesn't compromise the other side. It doesn't compromise the special effects, it doesn't compromise the action sequences. But what it does is, it gives a whole other side that's a little smarter," Smith said.

Accustomed to physical training for action roles, Smith said "I, Robot" also required the same level of dramatic preparation he put in for more serious films such as "Six Degrees of Separation" and "Ali," which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor.

While "Ali" was a box-office lemon, Smith's intense performance surprised people, especially considering the advance gripes from fans who felt the Fresh Prince of rap and TV sitcom fame was a lightweight choice to play Muhammad Ali.

Along with picking the right summer movie, the element of surprise has been a consistent strength for Smith, who has confounded doubters with every career turn.

After his 1980s music success as part of the rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Smith defied expectations by scoring with the television hit "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air."

"I view pigeonholes as good things, because that means you catch people blind," Smith said. "The one thing I learned in boxing is, the best thing that can happen is you get pigeonholed, that your opponent thinks you only throw two lefts then a right. Then you suddenly mix it up on him."

With a cameo role in this year's "Jersey Girl," Smith poked fun at himself and the low expectations people once had for him. In a scene set in the mid-1990s, Ben Affleck's character, a music publicist, heaps scorn on the idea that the Fresh Prince would ever have a movie career to speak of.

"He's a multitalented guy. He's got immense energy. He's a dynamo. He works like crazy and loves what he does. He really enjoys every aspect of what he does," said "I, Robot" director Alex Proyas. "It seems like a lot of actors sort of find their little niche and stick to it, where Will is all about trying something new each time."

Come fall, Smith provides the lead voice to the undersea animated comedy "Shark Tale," about a small fry who becomes a big fish when he falsely takes credit for doing in a great white that was the son of the local mob boss. The voice cast includes Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Angelina Jolie and Jack Black.

Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, also is trying the cartoon game, providing the voice of a hippo for next year's animated adventure "Madagascar." The family flicks, along with the PG-13-rated "I, Robot," are welcome news to the couple's young son and daughter and Smith's son from a previous marriage.

The children were shut out of the couple's R-rated offerings last year, Will Smith in "Bad Boys II" and Jada Pinkett Smith in "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions."

"My son said to me, 'Daddy, I thought the reason that we put up with this was so we can see the stuff,' " Smith said. "So I said, 'OK, you're right.' Now I've got a couple in a row that the kids can see."

Early next year, Smith has his first romantic comedy lead with "Last First Kiss," in which he plays a "date doctor" who guarantees male clients that he can make women fall in love with them in three days.

Smith also has a new album due out around the holidays. A self-described techno-geek, Smith said the album will feature a song whose vocals and instrumentation were recorded and mixed with a portable keyboard and a laptop keyboard, all on his own in a hotel room.

Meantime, Smith and his wife continue as executive producers on "All of Us," the TV sitcom loosely inspired by their domestic life as a couple building a second family after a divorce.

With success in movies, music and television, Smith keeps himself grounded with the thought that "there's something greater that I would like to achieve, there's something greater in store for me in the universe," he said.

"I don't view it as the end, as where I was going. I don't say, 'Whoa, I've succeeded,' " Smith said. "I still feel like I'm in the trenches. I love my life, I love where I am, but I don't feel like I have arrived. ...

"I'll keep doing it all as long as people want to hear it. Well, actually, I'll do it probably a little bit longer than people want to hear it."

[url="http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/living/9184436.htm"]http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily...ing/9184436.htm[/url]

[willreign]

Will power: Smith broadens acting range with troubled-cop role in 'I, Robot'

Science-fiction thrillers aren't necessarily known for their sexual heat. Get ready for Will Smith, starring in "I, Robot," which opened on Friday.

Audiences at test screenings took one look at Smith's post-"Ali" buffed bod -- on lengthy display in the opening scene of Alex Proyas' adaptation of several Isaac Asimov futuristic robot stories -- and let out the kind of cries usually heard at an Usher concert.

"The only one other time in my entire career that I felt that from an audience was in the first 'Bad Boys,' where I was running with the gun with my shirt open," Smith said. "I was in the back of the Magic Johnson Theater and I heard this black woman, 'Hmmm, go ahead, Will!' and it was said with sex and lust. I was like, 'That's kind of cool. I like that.'"

Equally cool for Smith is his "I, Robot" role, police Detective Del Spooner, a man bitterly opposed to the pervasive presence of robots in 2035 Chicago.

"This is definitely a change of pace. At every turn, this film goes a different direction than you would expect for a summer blockbuster. It's almost like a small art film," Smith said, with its attention to character and detail. "Because, generally, the special effects take precedent in (summer) films, and it was completely opposite in this movie."

For Smith, even though he's back in familiar sci-fi terrain ("Men in Black," "Independence Day"), Del Spooner represents a departure -- a bitter, maybe even paranoid cop who's far from the happy, wisecracking characters that made him a star.

With Proyas, Smith made a pact: "That this character would not resemble previous Will Smith characters. As an actor, Alex wanted me to act. He didn't want the personality. He wanted this character."

That, Smith will be the first to admit, was tough. "It's like wild horses trying to run out of me because comedy, that's where I live. That is my essence.

"It was just such a difficult place for me: to take it back, to rein it in, bring my voice down, bring my tone down. Just look at someone and say the line. That's so difficult for me, and watching the film with an audience, at every turn, they were right there with this troubled character who doesn't do physical comedy."

After working with Michael Mann on "Ali," Smith took to heart the filmmaker's obsession with psychological truth.

"Michael Mann studies the human mind and why people do things. The first thing that I did for 'I, Robot' (and now for every movie I've done) is I send the script to a group of psychologists and say, 'Tell me why this character would do this.'"

Smith was told that Spooner has classic survivor's guilt, the details of which are only gradually revealed in the course of the film.

"What happens is that if you're in an accident and you're the only person that survives, your life takes on a guilt for being alive. So you really lose; you almost indirectly hope that you can die, but you can't kill yourself because that's weak and cheap, and the other person didn't have that option."

If Smith has found a rewarding challenge in his work, he's also found something even rarer among world-class celebrities: balance. Devoted to his family and wife Jada Pinkett Smith (who co-stars in Mann's upcoming "Collateral"), Smith, whose first union ended in divorce, knows that marriage takes as much commitment as a career.

"Any woman that you put first, if you make her your first thought and first action of every day, and last thought and last action of every night, she will love you to the moon. I know what my priorities are. I don't let a day go past that she doesn't feel like the queen of the world and definitely the queen of my heart."

Smith flashed that familiar world-famous smile. "What you get from that is you get a lot of freedom to sort of not be there some of the time that you probably should've been there. That you can explore your other creative avenues. But I make sure every single day that she knows that she's the queen of my world."


[url="http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/artsCulture/view.bg?articleid=73449"]http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/artsCult...articleid=73449[/url]

[willreign]

I, Will, on a whirlwind visit

IT was more like I, Windswept for I, Robot star Will Smith yesterday. The 35-year-old jetted into Sydney for the premiere of his latest science fiction flick all turned around.



"I had a wonderful trip – to Brisbane," he laughed.


"With all the wind, the flight pattern was changed, so it took an extra four hours to get here."


But Smith was in good spirits as he paused to sign autographs for the handful of fans who turned out to meet him.


Wearing a blue tracksuit, Smith towered over the autograph hunters as he recalled his last visit to Australia several years ago.


"It's great to be here again. I was out here with [actress wife] Jada for The Matrix," he said. "We have the premiere tonight, press all day and then into Melbourne."


In I, Robot, Smith plays Dell Spooner, a detective investigating the suicide of a robotic scientist who designed the NS-5, a humanoid that provides efficient household help.


The film, which is directed by Alex Proyas, is set in the year 2035 and is based on the futuristic writings of author Isaac Asimov.

[url="http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1260&storyid=1642848"]http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.js...storyid=1642848[/url]

[Guest Prince]

Woah... That's alot of reading. Thanks! I'll read it later

[willreign]

take your time...

[Da Brakes]

Some good reading!! Thanks for all of that!!!