Thoughts on: I Am Legend **SPOILERS**

I finally got to see I Am Legend last night. I was initially very impressed with WIll Smith's performance. I've been watching scary movies since the age of ten, but he still managed to have just the right amount of crazy glinting in his eyes to make me scared of what would be coming later. The movie made me jump several times, and the suspense was really well done throughout. I'd say the first half of the movie was great.

I was kind of ambivalent about the monsters (zombies? vampires? some weird hybrid?) The idea of them was scarier than the look. I know they made the choice to do CGI because someone thought that humans in makeup weren't quite cutting it, but I think that may have been a mistake. The CGI zampires went a step too far. The stretching maws brought me out of the reality that Smith's Dr. Neville brought me into. In my mind I was saying, "okay...scary...scary...pfft, stretchy-face, that's not real...not so scary." The moments of drama, where we see Dr. Neville's memories of the last moments with his family moved and disturbed me at once. I can't say enough what a fine actor Will Smith has grown into. Too bad he couldn't save the second half of the movie from bad writing.

**BIG SPOILERS**

The movie had me right up until the point where Dr. Neville got captured. I believed that he could free himself from the trap and then get injured when he fell out of it. But - and the headlights of the train coming through plot hole #1 are in sight - why the hell did he not get up and book it out of there? He started scooting backwards, slowly, on his butt because he presumable could not walk. First of all, if you're going to scoot, scoot fast if you know you have a matter of seconds before a band of creepies are coming after you. It made no sense that this guy, who has endure for three years could not push himself to get up or to move faster. And, quite frankly, if they'd stuck with that, I would have grudgingly accepted it. But then once he actually got attacked and his dog got bitten, suddenly, miraculously, he was cured, could stand, could hobble to his car, could shoot a gun and wrestly a zampire dog and could carry his injured dog. Well hell, Dr. Neville if you'd just done that ten seconds earlier, you could have kept the damned dog! I smell contrivance in the air.

So, Dr. Neville somehow managed to get home to find out his dog was infected and then has to kill said pup. Very heart-wrenching. No one ever wants to see the kid or the pet bite it. Of course this caused Dr. Neville to snap and go on a suicide run after the zamps. Listen! You can hear the whistle of Contrivance Train #2 in the distance. Seconds before he having his head ripped off, he was saved! By a woman and her son weilding a handgun and a flashlight.

...

Yeah, so he had to live in a virtual bunker to survive, but this woman and her kid could thwart an entire army of baddies by themselves.

The trains crashed, the movie derailed. I should have called it quits right then. It just got downright silly, and I won't even bother to spoil the climax, which was unimpressive at best. I will say this though, the zamps could apparently scale a building in a matter of seconds with no problem.

The movie ended with Superwoman and her sidekick, who, by the way was not given a single line, finding a survivors colony. They came upon a huge steel gate that was opened by armed military types. With a voiceover, the camera panned back and you could see this wall, very much like the Great Wall of China, around this big complex.

Umm...the zampires can climb the side of a three-story building; they can't get over a wall?

If you're someone who can be forgiving of plot problems and cheesiness, then you'll enjoy the movie. I, however, am a plot snob. Holes just ruin the overall package for me. It's like seeing a nice, shiny apple, picking it up and then just before sinking your teeth into it, you find a nasty, black worm hole. Yuck. I am so glad I didn't pay ten bucks for a wormy apple when it first came out.