Will Smith stars in the namesake of Isaac Asimov's classic book of short stories, I, Robot. I say namesake, because even the credits admit that this film is "suggested by" the book. With that said, on its own, the film is ok.

I say "ok", because I didn't find the characters to be engaging enough to really care about any of them. I have a number of theories of what they were trying to do here, including providing a robot character more sympathetic than any of the main human characters. However, I found it to fall flat in that attempt. In the end, I would have been happy with the obvious alternate ending.

The visual effects, especially the robots, were extremely well done, with a good mix of human-like qualities with motions that were clearly reminiscent of robotics.

For the most part, I was reminded of a cross between Independence Day (Will Smith saves the world from aliens) and The Terminator . The robots appear to be part of a plot to take over the world from humans, and the only hope is Will Smith's Luddite cop character. The robots are coordinated and otherwise unstoppable.

If you like Will Smith, you'll appreciate the usual smooth delivery and a number of good lines. There's also a suitable amount of action, and some nice crowd animation.

Generally, though, if you see only a small number of movies a year, I'd hold off until this one hits video.