So what to discuss today, eh? Sugar-free oreos and their respective deliciousness? The funny face Perdro Farias makes when he laughs at me for trying to speak what little Spanish I know? How sad it makes me to look at my most recent bank statement? Any one of these things are freshly baked morsels of my life, so should you want to learn more, please contact me and I'll get down to it.
However, today, I've decided to dive into more pressing matters: I Am Legend.
Yes. A movie that came out last year.
Don't bug me. It feels current and pertinent to me, as I haven't yet gotten the opportunity to fully express myself on the issue.
Because I Am Legend is just that, an issue. An issue that must be resolved, right here, right now.
Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) is living alone in zombie-ridden New York City, struggling alongside his trusty sidekick Samantha the German shepherd to find the cure for this mutant disease. For the first hour of the movie, nothing remotely interesting happens, except for some flashbacks to just before all of New York tried to evacuate and a couple disturbing conversations with some manikins in a video rental store.
The excitement really begins to build when Sam and Neville almost get eaten by mutant humans. Then it falls again as Neville whittles away at his work in his high-tech lab testing out possible cure strains.
This is a hard movie to categorize. When I think “zombie,” I think Dawn of the Dead and horror films of that ilk, but Legend doesn’t really fit there, considering the danger of becoming lunch for a sub-human doesn’t even come into play until well into the movie. The next label I could give it would most likely be “thriller” or “action,” but again, until the very end, there’s very little that’s thrilling about it.
Evidently, the writers and directors, who undoubtedly had a hard time remaking a remake of a book-based movie, were trying to be as enigmatic as possible, leaving the audience guessing as long as they could before presenting all the facts. I usually advocate such a tactic, but there is a line one can cross: when you’re more than halfway through the movie and you still don’t know what happened to the main character’s wife and kid, or when you’re watching the last scene play out and you’re wondering how a doctor learned to weld metal sheets together to pull over his windows, or when the end credits are rolling and you’re scowling, thinking, “Wait…but there was definitely enough room for him in the chimney!”
The special effects that paint the picture of a lonely and desolate New York are well done, even if the rest aren’t anything special. The only redeeming quality of this movie was Will Smith and his superb acting. Playing a man who’s lived completely alone in a now dormant and barren city for three years has got to be challenging, and he pulled it off well, even if the sketchy circumstances surrounding that role were mediocre at best.
However, with Global Warming threatening our gradual demise and an economy that’s going to send us all to burger-flipping posts at the nearest McDonald’s, it’s nice to know that we could all to turn into blood-thirsty versions of ourselves and never have to worry about dependence on foreign oil. And if that happens, I just pray that someone as hard working and as good looking as Will Smith will be there to cure us all.
P.S. Spare yourselves and just watch Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, circa 1972. I haven't seen it, but it sounds much more promising than I Am Legend was able to deliver.
