The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of: I Am Legend

I'm going to go with this format of reviewing movies for the time being. I like this concept when the fine folks over at Reality News Online use it to discuss a television episode so hopefully it will work for movie reviews.



The Good: 1. The first hour. It was a solid, tight hour, that introduced the world nicely and set up the character of Robert Neville. You can really get the sense of what it must be like to be the last person on Earth, how the simple act of going through a specific routine each day keeps insanity in check.

2. Will Smith. I'm not his biggest fan, but I really enjoyed his performance. He threw off his joking persona (I refuse to watch The Pursuit of Happyness, so I don't care what he did there) and really got to the heart of the character. He got the audience to feel empathy for the character and what he was going through.

The Bad: 1. The Last Half-Hour. What happened? It was such a great movie for 60 minutes then suddenly it all went to pot. It was almost as if the screenwriters ran out of ideas and just decided to end the film as quickly as possible. As beautifully paced the first hour was, the last 30 minutes were rushed and riciculous.

2. The mother and son. They're obviously supposed to play a major part in the film, but when they have less than 30 minutes of screentime, it's hard to feel a connection to them.

The Ugly: 1. The ending. !!Spoilers herein!! Uh....a cure? He spent the whole movie looking for a cure and all he needed was some ice cubes? And what was that about "It's in the blood."? It didn't appear to be in the blood before. He uses the same compound that killed the mutant before only with ice this time but yet it's in the blood?

2. The mutants. I liked the special effects. Though it looked as if they were going to go down some mutant adaptation route then didn't. And if you're going to have a great actor like Dash Mihok in the film...give the man a scene that's not fx'ed over.

3. The title. Call it something else. It's one of these adaptation that aside from the title and main character name, has nothing in common with the source material. Either a different title or an "inspired by" credit would have worked better than claiming it's a adaptation.

There you go.....my opinions of the film....let me know yours! Seriously....please....I'm happy to take comments.