We’ve seen it once, we’ve seen it a million times (or three times at least): humanity’s timeline ends when a super plague sweeps the planet and turns all but a miniscule percentage of the populace into savage, gore hungry ghouls. One of the people immune to the disease (either by genetic lottery or from a vaccine that only they were able to take) thinks he’s the sole survivor of the planet and spends the next few years of his shitty life trying to stay sane and survive on canned food while either searching for a cure for the disease or reaching out in an attempt to find fellow survivors in hope of reigniting the spark of hope of a new generation of mankind. Such have always gone the adaptations of Richard Matheson’s novel “
I Am Legend”... until now… because now it’s being done on a Hollywood budget with retard strength and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the spotlight! I hope I remembered to put the cyanide in my hot chocolate this morning…
Okay, so here are the tweaks this time around: the plague is the result of a synthetic Measles virus that was created to cure cancer. It worked for the first few weeks, but as is the case with every experimental vaccination and miracle cure in these movies, the toilet backed up and everything turned to shit. Wading through said defecation was Dr. Colonel Robert Neville (Will Smith), who was put in charge of finding a cure for the virus. As you can pretty much figure, Bobbie didn’t do so well and every man, woman, and child (and a few of the animals) on Earth succumbed to the mutated plague, becoming savage computer generated (and fuckingly horribly at that) monstrosities with skin so sensitive they need SPF 5000 sunscreen. As such, the ghouls can only come out after the sun’s gone down, hence their new name: Dark Seekers. Dr. Col. Neville’s not alone in this tragic existence of global holocaust though, because he has a sidekick. No, sadly enough it’s not DJ Jazzy Jeff, but Bob’s loyal German Shepherd Samantha. Will Bob figure out how to reverse the effects of the virus and save the world? Will he be able to hold onto his depleting sanity long enough to do so? Did the movie deserve its 76+ million dollar opening weekend?! Allow me to answer: kinda, maybe, and not at all.
After having watched all of the prior adaptations to this tale the week before its release, I was actually a little psyched to see I Am Legend! Not eager enough to be considered for “beaver” status mind you, or even enough that I would’ve paid to see said movie, but interested enough to sit down and watch it on a Friday night none the less. I’m not a big fan of Will Smith, but the Fresh Prince knows what he’s doing and has the chops to make it happen when it calls for it. Every other time though, when he’s cast as the “Hi, I’m Will Smith! Please enjoy my performance tonight as I play Will Smith!” character, I can’t stand it. Between the “humor” that he should’ve left in on that playground in West Philadelphia (where he was born and raised…) or M.I.B. headquarters or wherever it was he started thinking that shit was entertaining, to the “I think he’s still trying to be funny but he’s still not” posturing, I hated the first 30 minutes or so of this movie. Whether he’s talking to himself, talking to his dog, or talking to the mannequins he’s set up all over the city in an effort to simulate some semblance of normalcy for himself, if I had to live with being Will Smith for three years doing that shit day in and day out, I would’ve painted my bathroom tile with bone and brain fragments shortly into the third or fourth week. The good news though is that, provided you can survive through the “Will Smith being Will Smith” dreck or, Set forbid, you’re one of the hordes of skull-fucked individuals that enjoy “Will Smith being Will Smith”, things switch around drastically later on as Neville’s life takes a turn for the darker corners of the human soul and we actually get some quality screen time out of the shithead star of Wild Wild West…
Even with Smith’s impressive dramatic turn, the movie’s still far from spectacular. As with any other version of Matheson’s story, there are plenty of logic farts to help deplete the sanity ozone. Some of them have little to do with the Matheson’s story itself though. Example: Neville’s leg is injured in one scene, leading to a dramatic stretch of him crawling to his SUV for five minutes before the sun goes down and the monsters can come out and eat him. Once the drama and tension of the scene are settled, he has little problem standing upright and walking around, something that no doubt would have helped him get his sorry ass into his fucking truck in the first place instead of going through that whole crawling bit. Example: the Dark Seekers send out their mutant dogs in one scene to try and kill Neville. Now, the Seekers' dogs are just as vulnerable to sunlight as they are, so it’s not like they have any distinct advantage at overtaking Neville than the Seekers themselves do. Here’s the problem: even after Neville stops the mutant dogs, NOT A SINGLE SEEKER GOES AFTER HIM! For a population of creatures who want nothing more than to tear Bobbie in half and suck out his juicy innards, you would think they’d take the opportunity to gang up and do just that while he’s vulnerable and distracted by the mutant dogs trying to rip out his throat! Do they? No. Despite the fact that not a day later (in movie time) they do just that and try to kill him in a vampire beast mob riot, they don’t think to do so when he’s at his weakest… a-fucking-stounding.
I don’t know why so many people see this movie as the second coming of Christ. The CGI Seeker monsters are just baaaaaaaaaaaaaad (and not in the "pre-pedophile reject from Society" Michael Jackson way), every other human character that does appear in the movie is worthless and the people playing them are so easily forgotten that I literally cannot recall their faces as I type this, and when he’s not emotionally tormented Will Smith is better off as bacon grease… whatever the Hell that means! By the time it was over I just felt like I Am Legend was only made because it gave Smith an excuse to be the absolute center of attention for the majority of the run time and not have to share any of the so-called spotlight with anyone else! That might explain why the rest of the cast consisted on wholly uninteresting cast members, mannequins, computer generated monsters with no functional speech, and a friggin’ German Shepherd!
Maybe the critical acclaim is a side effect of the cinematic saccharin enemas that are flooding the box office during the holiday season. Sure, with absolute loaves of diabetic diarrhea like Enchanted, Alvin and the Chipmunks and Fred Claus clogging the viewing public’s colon in an attempt to steal more money from the pockets of already struggling families in this, the year’s most commercialized abortion of a holiday season, it’s possible that the resultant delirium could be what’s leading people to believe that I Am Legend is better than it is! Then again, maybe I’ve fallen through a fucking time warp and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” is relevant again. Wait a minute, this is all Nick @ Nite’s fault for airing “Fresh Prince” reruns! Look what you’ve started you bastards! Before you know it, George Lopez and James Belushi will be the newest box office darlings of Tinseltown! I guess I should start digging my new bomb shelter and packing it with “Mister Ed” DVDs now if I intend to keep updating this site beyond the coming nuclear twilight…
As for you reading this, if you haven’t seen I Am Legend yet, just wait for the DVD, cuz you’re not missing much. If you insist on going out to the movies though, give your money to some people who actually deserve it and go see No Country For Old Men.
Moral of the Story: Will Smith is no replacement for Vincent Price.
