I Am Legend

This movie has been done twice before: The Last Man on Earth (starring one of my favorites, Vincent Price) and The Omega Man (starring another of my favorites, Charelton Heston). Both of them were able to pull off the role in completely different ways. Vincent Price was able to pull it off in a creepy way and Heston in a badass way. So when I heard that this was being made by Will Smith, I automatically thought of the movie "I, Robot" which I really hated. Of course, I'm not familiar with the source material as I was with "I, Robot" so I decided to give this a shot.

The last man on earth is not alone. Robert Neville (Will Smith) was a scientist and a soldier before a vaccination to cure cancer was given out and ended up turning people into strange vampire... things. Now, Smith is just walking around Manhattan with his dog (who was adorable as a puppy by the way) going "crazy", trying to cure the virus, and live as normal a life as possible.

I love character driven films, I really do. I mean, I really liked "The Assassination of Jesse James" which was a 3 and a half hour movie with about 15 minutes of action and all and the rest was all character development. It was a brilliant film, and films about isolation and decents into maddness, I love. This movie though, this movie somehow made 1 hour and 45 minutes feel like 6 hours. The first 15 minutes hold promise, but the next 15 minutes are exactly the same, as are the following 15 minutes up until the final 15 minutes. Nothing ever freaking happens and, unlike Heston or Price, Smith is not able to hold this film from being boring.

Smith has become the biggest box office draw of the time. Stick this man in a movie and it is garunteed to get a giant box office, even if the movie isn't that good (Hitch). I do have a large like of Will Smith. I think we was great in Ali and does have a great charm and is very funny in the "Men in Black" films. As of late, I have been growing tired of him. He plays the same exact role in every single film. He is always the charming guy who cries at some point in this movie. In this movie, he cries a lot and is "charmingly funny" a lot. The schitck has gotten old for me and I want something new.

Oh, and for the director: YOU'RE NOT PAUL GREENGRASS! Shaking the camera does not make it "scary" nor does it build any tension. In fact, it just gives us a headache. Lucky for us, we don't have to put up with it since there are only three action scenes in the entire film, all of them poorly executed.

The man reason they don't click is because of all the crappy cgi that is in this film. Why do you need the main vampires CGI'd? It isn't even like what they look like is that un-human. They could have easily been done with makeup, and very cheaply also. You just need some white makeup that looks translucent. BAM! Damn, how hard is that? Even if they only had the main vampires. They had two different main vampires. That would have added some credibility to it instead of taking the audience out of it all with CGI flying this way and that way.

Honestly, I really disliked this movie. It is the first movie that I've ever walked out of to go to the bathroom halfway through. It took me about 5 minutes and guessed how much I had missed? 0. Nothing that contributed to the film. The second half of the film, I couldn't control my yawning. Don't get me started on the blatant 9/11 references OR the product placement (which was the exact same as "I, Robot": EVERYWHERE! Good thing I have a MAC, that way I can cure the world of vampires too!). If I was marketing this sucker the tagline would have been more informative: "The Last Man on Earth Is Boring As Hell."