[This review and following commentary contains spoilers for the film I,Robot. You have been warned!]

I've had a few days to process my conflicting responses to I,Robot, so this post will contain a quick response to the film and then a little bit more on my thoughts about what I,Robot says about bodies, technology and related fears.

Film Review Bit:
If I,Robot is being seen by young audiences who have little or no familiarity with the long history of science fiction literature or films, then this is probably a pretty decent film. Sure, Will Smith overacts for the first half so that his character-detective Del Spooner-will seem to have a deeper and more nuanced quality by the end of the film. Sure, Bridget Moynahan is poorly cast as Susan Calvin, making the strong, intelligent Asimovian character into a tokenistic female off-sider for Will Smith; she seemingly 'accomplishes' something when she learns to shot Will's big gun! That said, the film looks pretty amazing and the future is an interesting visual landscape; the robots look like what I've imagined robots will look like, and the high technology blends into the everyday; it doesn't jut out and proclaim 'look at this cleverly thought up gadget'. The CGI is smooth and the main robot Sonny (is that Sony or Sunny?) is convincing on a Gollumish level (apparently using the same technology as was used to create Gollum). The action sequences explode with well-directed clockwork, and lots of things blow up, get shot and end up in pieces. For a fifteen year old boy, I, Robot probably rocks! However, for anyone who has ever watched more than one or two science fiction films, this film is almost offensively predictable and morphing the interpretation of Asimov's zeroth law into a fascist-like computer-directed nanny culture seemed pretty cheap (you may recall a few months ago I worried that I,Robot would basically use the 'Sentinels' plot from the X-Men comic; I think I might have been right).

Techno-Rant Bit:
What I found most interesting about the film, though, it the implicit issue of robot rights and what or whom is or isn't alive. Sonny, the film's central robotic character (from a motion-captured template, using actor Alan Tudyk of FireFly fame) really does come across as a sympathetic character. From the beginning, we know that a company that advertises their products as 'three laws safe' will have 'products' that aren't safe. Those laws, if you've missed them, are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. [From Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot. 1950. London: Panther, 1968, p. 8.]

While director Alex Proyas admits that, at best, the film was "suggested" by Asimov's writing, the fidelity to the three laws is pretty weak from the first moment. Sonny, we learn, has 'two' positronic brains and while programmed with the laws (presumably in one brain) can choose to ignore them (presumably using the other); this seems a rather second-rate plot point since we never find out what else having two brains might actually do. Sonny's arguments and responses after he is accused of murdering his creator, Dr. Alfred Lanning (played by James Cromwell) are very emotive, while his claims to having had dreams immediately situate him in the human(-like) realm. I wonder if a claim to having dreams acts a bit like a claim to having a soul? Either way, at a metaphoric level, Sonny is a repressed human 'other' by about thirty minutes in.