Saturday, July 17, 2004

Did the usual Saturday morning movie thing. I saw I, Robot and while it had some excellent action, it lacked originality.  The characters felt like lame copies from other movies and stories. Watch Chi McBride take Smith's badge from him and do the whole "you are a loose canon-take a vacation-and stay off this case" routine. Or Smith getting chummy with Bridget Moynahan similar to the way he and Linda Fiorentino did in Men in Black. It is interesting to note that in most movies the cliche is that they kiss or screw during the hate/love relationship. It is always refreshing when they skip that tired and unrealistic crap and stick with ending it with mutual respect for overcoming whatever problem exists in the movie. Yet it's interesting too that race may play a role in skipping the cliche. Watch the Pelican Brief and then read the book to see what I mean.    Other than a few robots and some futuristic cars, it lacked any sense of taking place in the year 2035. People dress nearly the same as they do today.  Watch any old movie that is set in their present day and you can tell what decade it takes place. Hell the Bill Gates-ish CEO is still wearing a tie. Everyone who has seen a movie set in the future knows that mans progress is based on the abolition of wearing ties.      Overall the story just didn't make much sense.  Hell they go for a cheap joke where Smith is given coffee during his interview with Bruce Greenwood, when he says "sugar?" and ha ha ha Greenwood thinks he is calling him Sugar. But oh no what he really meant was do you have any sugar for the coffee. Oh my how original and hilarious. Yet what's this they pan to Smith pouring scoops of sugar into his coffee cup. A coffee cup that was right next to the sugar bowl on the serving tray from which he poured his own coffee.  Little things like that bug me. A homicide detective who doesn't notice a bowl of sugar right in front of him. And he wasn't doing the whole Columbo dopey detective routine. The director just did it for a cheap laugh. Though I don't think anyone did laugh.       The best part of the movie was seeing the preview for the movie Ray about the life of Ray Charles.        Save yourself the money and skip this movie, wait until it's on cable otherwise you will feel the way I do, I Robbed.

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