I am ... *yawn*

Characteristically putting myself behind on the movie curve, I saw I Am Legend last night. The otherwise nonfunctional DVD drive in my laptop decided to work so viewing it in my room was possible, and of course today the fucking thing is busted, which leads me to believe that it has something to do with ghosts. Anyway, I Am Legend.

I'll start off by saying that I enjoyed it, which is a break from the usual "intelligent" - and by intelligent I mean not paid for by Warner Bros. - reviews of this film. It was short, sweet, to the point and lacked any major plot holes which usually decorate Hollywood movies like big shiny flashy Christmas light that spell out the words plot hole. The story, for those who have not read the identically titled book or have not seen The Last Man On Earth or Omega Man, stars Robert Neville, a military scientist who proves immune to a human-created disease that wipes out most of the planet, and turns a good portion of what is left into "Dark-Seekers", a kind of speedy zombie with the vampiric trait of frying to death in sunlight. Neville lives in New York City and for the past three years has been trying to come up with a cure for the disease.

I said that I enjoyed the movie, but there is a pretty clear distinction between the first and the second half. Midway through the film a new character, Anna, appears, rescuing Will Smi - I mean Neville - from the Dark-Seekers. At that point, there is a miraculous sunrise and while Anna is questioning Neville, a big cross bearing the one and only Jesus takes center-shot. Anna claims that there is a survivors colony in the north, because the virus could not deal with cold weather, and when Neville asks her how she knows, well, God told her. From that point on, every sequence, even up to the finale, can be explained with the phrase, "God did it."

I don't particularly have a problem with religion in films, and I don't mind that Anna's character is a Jesus freak, but the movie validates it. Even Neville, who staunchly refuses to believe in God, has a conversion at the end. For a film that tries to so hard to be realistic, and spends so much time with panoramic shots of abandoned NYC, it breaks all of that work down in the end. That, just so you know, is not good film making.

I Am Legend did not strike me as a bad film, but it did strike me as a very lazy one. I mentioned before that it avoided major plot holes, but I didn't say anything about minor holes. Examples: A good deal of time is spent in Neville's lair: a townhouse converted into an armored fortress. In one shot, a gas-powered generator is shown, which readily explains why he has electricity. Fine. So how does he keep his lab powered? One gas generator isn't enough to provide power for a few computers, halogen lights, electronic medical equipment and a gene sequencer. Another example of laziness that leads to plot holes is how Anna came to find Neville. In an effort to contact other survivors, Neville broadcasts a message each day. Anna just happened to turn on her radio one day and hear is message. And yes, that is how it is explained: not, "I've been scanning different frequencies and heard your broadcast" or "I found a radio and used it" but "I've had a perfectly good radio this whole time and had to wait to hear the word from The Man Upstairs to turn it the fuck on."

I don't expect every movie to be Chinatown, but put some damn effort into it. Lazy might not be an elegant word that flaunts my massive writer's vocabulary, but it sums up I Am Legend perfectly. I can see where some would take this movie as Christian propaganda, but it is most certainly not a God movie. It replaces legitimate plot points with a series of coincidences, and takes the flow of the story out of the characters hands. The reason why Robert Neville is important is because he is Robert Neville, and saying that it doesn't matter because God sorts his shit out in the end means he could very well have been Robert Smith of The Cure. Or Ghandi.

I Am Legend might be good for a jump out moment or two, and some unintentionally funny Will Smith moments, but leaves the bitter taste of "So what?" in the views mouth. Or, eyes.

Can eyes taste?

What if they could?

That'd be weird...