I am Legend
Studio: Warner Bros.
Rated: PG-13
Cast: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Dash Mihok, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Charlie Tahan
Director: Francis Lawrence
WorkNameSort: I am Legend
Our Rating: 2.00
Don’t get me wrong. I like Will Smith. I mean, who doesn’t? Not liking Will Smith would be like not liking ice cream. Or kitties. Or sunshine. You’ve heard of “feel-good” movies? Smith is a “feel-good” movie star. But his latest film, I Am Legend, isn’t remotely feel-good. Set in the near future, it reveals a Manhattan that has been depopulated by a man-made plague. Smith appears to be the last person on the island, if not the planet, unless you count the zombies – i.e., tragically mutated humans.
The film opened Dec. 14, with a whopping weekend box-office take of $76.5 million and mostly mixed reviews. Or, as Richard Corliss of Time magazine puts it, “The word ‘mixed’ isn’t mixed enough to fit my response to this film.”
The critics don’t like the cheesy special effects that created those zombies. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter complains about “annoyingly fake creatures that add a risible element” to the film. Some of the critics, like Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal, seem almost embarrassed to be spending their time on this sort of thing. “Zombies,” he says helplessly, “are zombies.”
One thing the critics like is what Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman calls the “sheer eeriness” of the nearly deserted Manhattan, and they’re right about that. The sight of the great city gone to seed – with deer racing through Times Square, corn growing in Central Park and the bridges cruelly truncated – is devastating.
All the critics like Smith. And, as I say, who doesn’t? But liking Smith is one thing and praising his hollow performance here, as almost all of them have, is another. Smith plays a scientist who’s immune to the infection and determined to develop a cure. The filmmakers give his character a loyal dog to love and cuddle. And then they … TAKE THE DOG AWAY. I’m sorry, but this is one of the most primitive tricks in movie history. Can’t the reviewers tell the difference between sensitive acting and naked manipulation?
Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers calls Smith’s performance “genuine and moving” and Salon.com’s Stephanie Zacharek gushes, “If there were only one man left in New York, you’d want it to be Smith.” Most puzzling of all is Morgenstern’s comment that as Smith “takes on the demeanor of an archetypal mad scientist … the film becomes a showcase for its star’s dramatic gifts.” So, the more clichéd Smith’s performance becomes, the better he is in the role?
A.O. Scott of The New York Times speaks for many when he suggests that few actors could do as well as Smith in holding the screen virtually alone. “There are not many performers who can make themselves interesting in isolation,” he says. Me, I can’t help thinking how much more involving the movie would have been if someone quirkier – Johnny Depp, say, or John Malkovich – had played the part.
In the Baltimore Sun, Michael Sragow is almost as alone in his opinion of Smith’s performance as Smith’s character is on the island of Manhattan. “There’s no center to his character,” Sragow observes, “except for guilt and determination.” Exactly. In I Am Legend, Smith comes a little too close to playing one of those zombies. And to borrow Morgenstern’s phrase, “Zombies are zombies.”
This article appears in Dec 19-25, 2007.