In which Gerry Hayes dons his Converse All-Stars (vintage 2007), pops some Stevie Wonder on the JVC and copes with his crippling fear of product placement.
I, Robot, 2004.
Directed by Alex Proyas.
Starring Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan and that squidgy bloke from Firefly as a shiny robot.
Written by Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman and, definitely not, Isaac Asimov.
I wonder if there’s any chance of getting free stuff if I do some product placement of my own. I really like my new Porsche 911. It is supremely engineered and an utter joy to drive. Good mileage too. Hello? Porsche? Come on, I couldn’t write about I, Robot and not mention the face-slappingly blatant product placement. It’s incredibly intrusive and I feel it mars what is an, otherwise, magnificent film. Nah, just kidding – it’s rubbish.
Smith plays Detective Del Spooner, a cop with a dark, dark secret that haunts his nightmares and gives him a distrust of anything more technical than a CD player. Pity him then, for he lives in 2035 and the place is overrun with robots. Robot delivery-guys, robot-chefs, robot bartenders, robot hookers.
“Wait,” I hear you call, “what if the robots go mental and start killing people?” Splendid question, but one that’s taken care of by ‘The Three Laws’.
- A robot cannot harm a human or do bad stuff.
- A robot must obey a human unless it’s really kinky.
- I think it was something about pizza.
So, the evil corporate giant is US Robotics. They seem to have a monopoly on the robot-market which isn’t bad in forty-odd years – if my past experience is anything to go by they’d still have been making dodgy modems. One of their top scientists falls to his death in an apparent suicide. Spooner thinks differently though, because there was a robot in the room with the scientist when he died and Spooner really hates robots. Spooner begs his lieutenant for the chance to interrogate the robo-perp – “Just gimme five minutes,” he says. Really. He doesn’t get a chance to break the perp though as the robot is recalled back to Evil Corporate Giant HQ for a reformat.
Undaunted, Spooner continues to investigate the scientists death. He gets set upon by a demolition-bot (where he has his save-the-cat moment even though the ungrateful moggy scarpers when Spooner falls down the stairs) and is attacked in a tunnel by a squadron of robots. What a mess. Why, it’s enough to get him taken off the case.
But, damn, he’s tenacious. Enlisting the help of beautiful, but cold, cliché, I mean, robot psychologist, Susan Calvin, they discover that their robo-perp, who likes to be called ‘Sonny’, is actually a new super-robot with dreams of being some sort of robot cult-leader. He was built by the dead scientist to have secrets that would act as clues for Spooner. Personally, if the guy was able to build clues into a super-robot, I reckon he would probably have been able to pop a letter to Spooner in the post but, there you go.
It’s all been a big plot, you see. The robots are going to enslave the human race for some reason – I wasn’t really paying attention by this stage. Spooner, Sonny, and their beautiful, but cold, lady friend need to save humanity by destroying a giant computer brain in a Death Star-like room just crammed full of health and safety violations.
So humanity’s saved and they’ve all grown in some way. Beautiful, but cold, Calvin is a little less cold and a little hot for Spooner. Spooner is a little less wary of robots and Sonny becomes Robot-Jesus. The end.
Before finishing though, I’d like to list the things I liked in this film:
- I like all of the abandoned robots in the shipping containers because they make me think of Bender’s My Broken Friend song.
- Stevie Wonder’s Superstition
- Nothing else.
Oh, and if you owned of those robots, wouldn’t you draw a moustache on it?
Read more I Sat Through That? right here.
Gerry Hayes is a garret-dwelling writer subsisting on tea, beer and Flame-Grilled Steak flavour McCoy’s crisps. You can read about other stuff he doesn’t like on his blog at http://stareintospace.com or you can have easy, bite-sized bits of him at http://twitter.com/gerryhayes
Originally published July 19, 2009. Updated November 21, 2022.
