Friday, June 20, 2008

MOVIE: I Am Legend

I honestly think some movies are best viewed on "The Big Screen." The sound effects sound better. The visual effects look better. I Am Legend is one of those movies.

The movie was drowning in Computer Generated Images (CGI.) The opening scene didn't work well for me at all. The car barreling down the over-grown corpse of New York was obviously fake and over-done. It was hyper-realistic. Too many things that were too perfect. Good intentions, certain, but bad execution. Then there were the zombies. Waaaaaaaay too comic-bookish. They didn't move with anything approaching realism. They weren't the least bit believable. I like to think the movie would have worked better in a theatre. But on my screen, it fell surprisingly short of my expectations.

Aside from the CGI, I thought the plot was extremely shallow. The flashbacks added depth, but they were not enough to carry the whole movie. There wasn't enough dialog to really to form an opinion. And the plot was more predictable than it was interesting and I think it missed an opportunity to shine by not aggressively pitting the hero against a more interactive and challenging villain.

On a positive note, I did enjoy the slight twist at the ending, involving an oft repeated admonition from a young boy. That surprised me, only briefly, but didn't do anything to lesson my dislike of the ending.

Perhaps a lightly-entertaining date flick. Not something I'd recommend for the younger kids, but perhaps teens would dig it. If there's $2 in change in the sofa, it might be worth renting.

I only hope there's no sequel .

1 comment:

deadmoon said...

Read the book - it's actually packed with some other great stories as well. Then go rent The Omega Man with Charleton Heston, and let me know what you think?