I Am Legend was one of the biggest box office hits of 2007, finishing in sixth place on the year with an estimated domestic gross of $256,393,000 and change. The film received lots of positive reviews, and since I usually like Will Smith movies, I knew I’d eventually get around to seeing it. I didn’t have a chance to catch it in theaters, but was finally able to rent it last weekend.
I managed to remain unspoiled for this film, meaning I didn’t have any idea what it was about beyond what was shown in trailers. As it turns out, I shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to avoid reading detailed reviews or listening in on discussions my friends had about the movie because not much happened in it anyway!
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Smith stars as Col. Robert Neville, a man who appears to be the only human survivor in New York City after a deadly virus wiped out the rest of the population in the year 2012. Neville spends most of his days driving around the city with his dog Sam, hunting wild game and scrounging for supplies.
Strangely, he keeps a close eye on the time and makes sure to hustle back home while there’s still a bit of sunlight left. Furthermore, he barricades himself in his home at night, barring the door and pulling steel barriers down over the windows. Hmm, maybe he’s not alone after all.
As luck would have it, Neville is a virologist, so he spends the rest of his abundant free time in his basement laboratory working on cure for whatever wiped out most of humanity in the first place. He currently runs his test on bats and other creatures, but according to his notes, nothing has proven effective so far.
Later we learn that Neville does indeed have company in NYC. Apparently, not all of the infected humans died. Those that weren’t killed outright by the virus ended up suffering from rabies-like symptoms that not only turned them into raving lunatics, but also disfigured/elongated their skulls and transformed them into vampire-like creatures that are afraid of sunlight. Neville runs into a couple of these creatures in an abandoned building, and again later on when he gets ensnared in a trap.
Neville then gets a shock when two more uninfected survivors show up in the city. They are Anna (played by Alice Barga) and Ethan (Charlie Tahan), who help rescue him after he essentially tries to kill himself following the death of Sam, his only companion. Anna says they are heading to a survivor’s camp in Vermont, and encourages Neville to join them. Neville, however, replies that there are no survivors and that the two of them would just be wasting their time.
Things come to a head when Neville’s formerly secret abode is discovered by the vampire-like beings. These creatures apparently followed Anna and Neville after Anna’s rescue mission, and are now laying siege to the place. Neville leads Anna and Ethan to the basement, where he secures them in a hiding place. He also discovers that his latest cure actually worked, so he takes a vial of blood from the test subject, gives it to Anna, and tells her to carry it to the survivor’s camp. Neville then turns to face the onslaught of infected creatures, pulls out a grenade, and blows the lab up in order to save humanity.
My Reaction: I was kind of disappointed with I Am Legend because absolutely nothing happens in the first 30 minutes of the film! That whole time was spent in establishing Will Smith’s character, showing his daily routine, and hinting at what happened. The first vampire creature appeared right around the 30-minute mark, at which point things started to get a bit better. But that first part of the movie? What a snooze!
I also didn’t like how most of the story hinged on how Neville just happened to be a virologist who could sit around in the post-apocalyptic world and develop a cure. I mean, I’m willing to accept a certain amount of coincidence in movies, but that was a big one that was really hard to swallow.
After watching the film, I decided to go read the Wikipedia entry about the original novel, and I have to say that it sounded infinitely better than this adaptation. One line in the summary over there reads:
Neville sees the destruction of the infected survivors as a right, a moral imperative even, to be pursued for his own — and in turn the human race’s — survival. But at the end of the novel, he has a glimpse of a future society in which infection is the norm and Neville is a murderous deviant.
To me, that seems like it would have made a far more interesting theme than the standard Hollywood cleanup that we got in the latest adaptation, where Neville is turned into a typical hero who sacrifices himself to save the world. No wonder so many fans of the original novel were upset with the liberties taken in the film!
Overall, I Am Legend suffers from slow development, a boring plot, and an uninspired ending. I give the film just 2 stars out of 5, and wish I had read the original book instead!
A new episode of Bones aired on Monday night, but I didn’t get a chance to sit down and watch it until earlier this evening. The ep was called “Player Under Pressure”, and was originally scheduled to air during Season 2. But then the 
It’s been a while since I’ve hosted a giveaway, so I figured this would be a good time to do another one. Up for grabs this week is a very cool Alien Nation DVD movie collection. You might remember Alien Nation as a short-lived television series that aired on FOX from 1989-90. The show was canceled because of budgetary problems despite being very popular with fans, which of course left lots of folks extremely disappointed.
After a ho-hum Marshall-centric episode last week (and a generally up and down season overall), How I Met Your Mother made up for everything — and then some — with a new development that many fans have been waiting for since Season 1: the Barney and Robin hookup!! 
Anyway, when Simon shows up, the gang is astonished to see that he’s not quite the catch that Robin remembered. Played by James Van der Beek, Simon has a pot belly, thinning hair, receding hairline, works in a water park, lives with his parents, and still harbors dreams of making it big with his garage band. Robin obviously has won the “how did your life turn out” competition, yet Simon still exercises a strange influence on her. She can’t see his flaws, and reverts back to the giggling 16-year-old who had a crush on him.
Later, Robin agrees to go on a date with Simon, after which she ends up liking him again thanks to revertigo. But Simon promptly dumps Robin yet again after one date, and she takes it pretty hard. In fact, she ends up in the bar all alone crying in her beer. That’s when Barney shows up and starts comforting Robin. Because he’s being so nice to her, Robin decides to invite him back to her place to watch the other Robin Sparkles video that he’s been dying to see. They watch it over and over — and then they start kissing! Due to the hotness of the kiss, there’s little doubt as to how far they went that night….
Last night’s episode of Desperate Housewives was called “In Buddy’s Eyes”, and though I have no idea what that title is in reference to, I’m happy to say that this was the best DH ep I’ve seen in a long time! It featured many of the elements that made me start watching the show in the first place, and spent just the right amount of time on each storyline. There were a couple of twists along the way, plus the start of a new mystery with that final shot of some unknown character circling Dylan’s picture in the newspaper.
Gabby/Carlos: Gabby still feels that taking care of blind Carlos is a burden, so she decides to try to get something out of it for herself. She applies for a handicap parking placard in Carlos’s name, and then uses it when she’s out running errands. After getting into a confrontation with two wheelchair-bound men because of her obvious lack of a physical handicap, Gabby smartens up and actually brings Carlos with her the next time. But she leaves him in the car while she gets everything done, which makes him feel like even more of a useless burden. They finally have it out and come to something of an understanding — for the time being.
Katherine/Bree: Katherine and Bree work together planning a major event called the Founder’s Ball. Of course, they have differing opinions on just about everything, from the centerpieces to the Waldorf salads, which causes Bree to bristle. Then, when Bree hears that Katherine is presenting the major award of the night, something that Bree has traditionally done, she becomes vindictive. She lets Katherine try some kind of dip, after which Katherine falls ill. Nevertheless, Katherine insists on presenting the award — which goes to Bree.
Two new releases took over the top spots at the box office this weekend, as last week’s champ Prom Night slipped to No.3 in the country with $9.1 million in sales — less than 50% of what the film did in its opening. 
I just started watching Bones in October of last year, but thanks to the WGA strike, I was able to catch up on all episodes from the first two seasons, as well as the nine episodes from the current season that aired before the strike. So when the show finally came back with a new ep last Tuesday, I was happy to see Booth, Brennan, and the rest of the gang again.
Ben Stiller is one of those classic romantic comedy guys, which I guess is why he appears in so many films of this genre. What I mean is, he’s very convincing as your average nice guy who, as Roger Ebert puts it, is fantastic at doing a slow burn — just letting all of the other characters and situations grate on him without complaint until he simply cannot take it anymore. The audience sympathizes with a guy like this, and we can understand the outburst when it finally does come.
Books filled with political satire are typically not found on my reading list, but I’d heard so many great things about America the Book by Jon Stewart that I decided to forget my usual reservations with the genre and check this one out. After all, Stewart would be discussing current events, so his jabs at the government should be easier to understand than, say, the ones Swift took at his government in Gulliver’s Travels, right?