I, Robot, Cinderella Story

I, ROBOT: Will Smith takes another summer plunge, his 7th summer movie since 1995, beginning with BAD BOYS. Lets face it, Will Smith is just darn likeable. His presence in a movie means that even if you're not having fun, he's going to try to make it worth your while. I, ROBOT is based on the collection of Isaac Asimov stories which I have not read, but it has widely been discussed that this movie takes very little from the source material. It is, in fact, "suggested by" the Asimov work as the credits state. So, we've got some ideas about robots here, with the same utopian rules set in place that Spielberg last mined in MINORITY REPORT. As such, we know that in sci-fi, utopias often contain a wrinkle that threatens to destroy the perfect world. Here, it's basically the same man vs. machine conflict that all three TERMINATOR movies have explored--men create machines so that men don't have to work as hard, and machines begin to think for themselves and try to do away with men. Will Smith plays a cop who just doesn't trust robots for some reason, and when a notable scientist who created the robots turns up dead, he suspects robots and believes he's found his way to cracking the system. Along with it, the usual trapping: he has a by-the-rules lieutenant telling him to cool down or lose his job, cop loses job, cop continues to search for answers as a civilian, tells everyone (as in the trailer), "I told you so." There is some fairly good action, but not enough, and the best character is once again CG with voiceover, a HAL 9000-like robot named Sonny (Alan Tudyk). Director Alex Proyas has always been a little hit-or-miss with me. THE CROW is above average and got entirely more play from the death of Brandon Lee than the movie deserved, and there was the stylish but rather unexciting DARK CITY (I do grant that these films have a high cult status, one which I am not a part). I don't really think there's anything here for a Proyas fan to latch onto; it's the usual bug that latches onto smaller directors when they do a big summer flick, they basically make what anyone else would make, because it's generally a studio's vision. Overall, decent, but fails to live up to the big-time expectation of a movie with this sort of material.

A CINDERELLA STORY: Hilary Duff is as ubiquitous a celebrity as they come, having a hit Disney series "Lizzie McGuire" that was turned into a surprise mid-level hit movie last summer, the fallout with Disney, the hit album that followed that blazed a trail for future teen celebrities to follow (hit movies and hit albums), the apparent rivalry with other hot teen celeb Lindsay Lohan, an appearance in one of this year's surprise hits, CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, and countless magazine covers, tv appearances, and now a cover of the Go-Go's "Our Lips Are Sealed," with sister Haylie. And she's still 16. We all know the Cinderella story, and in many ways it's the archetype for the unpopular vs. popular high school kid movies of today. Cinderella, while being insanely beautiful and nice, is very poor (and hence, unpopular and unsuited for royalty), and is shit on by her stepmother and stepsisters, leading to the conflict that basically leads the heroine to enter adulthood. And the ball has been replaced by the prom or homecoming. In all of these types of pictures these days, the lead character is so wonderful that it is impossible to believe that people in the school actually think ill of her. In the grand "ball" sequence, Duff wears a mask only covering part of her face, but not one dumb-dumb in the entire place knows who she is. It's like the Superman/Clark Kent syndrome where we can't believe Lois Lane can distinguish between the two. Duff is a magnetic looker of a girl, and we're supposed to swallow that once the mask is off, the object of her affection (this time, another dude in these types of movies where you'll hear the name and quickly forget--Chad Michael Murray) doesn't recognize her. This movie is strictly for the pre-high school set. I imagine that, though the movie is set in high school, actual high schoolers will find this boring. The pacing is quite slow, and after twenty minutes I could have sworn an hour had gone by. Duff is winsome and Murray fills a role almost any handsome dude could, it's just...unbelievable. It's a fairy tale stripped of magic, and in that way it shares more with KING ARTHUR than you would ever think.