Not A "Legend"

Saw "I Am Legend" last night. Mediocre. Charlton Heston's "The Omega Man" from 1971 is far superior.

"Legend" does some things well. Will Smith is always entertaining; yes, the FX are good, sometimes amazing, particularly the decayed New York City; and it is not nearly as violent or gruesome as it could have been. And while Smith finds himself in some cliched situations, the filmmakers thankfully avoided one big one that could have really killed the flick altogether (involves a spoiler, so I'll leave it at that.)

We never learn much about the zombies that stalk Smith, who exhibit some combination of human intelligence and animal savagery and teamwork. They are never developed as characters if you will, but rather come across as merely teaming hordes of video game bad guys -- which is of course what they are. (I expect there is/will be a game, and I expect the game zombies to come from the same bits and bytes.)

The focus is all on Smith's Mr. Neville -- his daily routine, his loneliness, his dog. (The dog has more personality than all the zombies put together. Is that because it's a real dog?) It reminded me of Tom Hanks, all alone in "Castaway," talking to his soccer ball Wilson.

Like so many movies they make nowadays, on the level of craft, "Legend" is light years beyond a cheesy relic like "Omega Man," but it has no magic. All the elements of a good movie are supposedly there, but the ingredients remain inert, and the experiment fails. (Well, this failure had a $76 million dollar opening, but you know what I mean.)

I take perverse pleasure in Hollywood continually proving that movie making, like other art forms, cannot be reduced to a paint-by-numbers formula.