Holiday Movie Review: I Am Loser

31May08

I don’t know what y’all do when you’re on holidays but I like to get caught up on the in-house movies at motels around the country (obviously in betwen doing actual fun stuff). I never get to see movies in the real world, what with the cost of oil/movie tickets and my extreme cynicism and stuff, so holidays are like my only little B-movie film festival. With instant hot chocolate and central heating.

So, I used to love Will Smith. Yeah, it’s a little sad now that he’s declared that he wants to be President Of The World and started playing all these brooding buff dudes with planet-saving-sized chips on their shoulders and a penchant for working out in front of mirrors while admiring the size of their appendages – but it’s the truth. And what am I if not honest on the interwebs?

So, in I Am Legend, he plays – according to the poster and the trailers and the back of the DVD – The Last Man On Earth. And you can tell that underneath all the brooding and pretending to look for other people that he just loves it. So much so, in fact, that when he finds two other people – nay, when two other people save his life after he goes and does some stupid shit – he gets all huffy with them. He says it’s because they ate some of the bacon he was saving for later, but we all know it’s because if there are other people, then he’s not really The Last Man On Earth. And it gets worse for our Will when these other people start talking about a whole colony of survivors – he gets furious and tries to pretend it’s not happening. Because HE is The Last Man On Earth (they promised him, when he signed up to do the movie!) And he tries to prove his point with some extremely dodgy maths, because apparently 90% of the worlds population died of Some Random Fake Virus, and 9% (five hundred and forty million, by his count) became wierd non-human zombies, and only one percent survived in human form – which means HE IS THE ONLY ONE!

Because he’s the only one hard enough to have outwitted the wierd zombies and found himself food and shelter etc. None of the other estimated SIXTY MILLION survivors could be nearly so clever – because HE is The Last man On Earth! Did you not read the back of the DVD box, he asks us. It says, right there that Will Smith is The Last Man On Earth. That’s what his agent told him and that’s why he agreed to do the movie and he’s not at all happy about this rewrite, got it?

And you so want one of the other people (a kid, no less) to pull him aside and say ‘Dude! Look around! She’s a chick and I’m TEN! And we’re not dead. So quit looking at your biceps in the mirror and going on about how Bob Marley told you to save the world and get over yourself’, but he doesn’t.

In the end, you spend the whole movie hoping he dies, because he’s just so insufferable with his inflated sense of self-importance and whole ‘I am The Last Man On Earth’ whinging. And then he does, and you cheer (well, I cheered, and I’ve never cheered the death of a TV or film character ever, even when they’re a horrible baddie) – except, of course, that his dying makes him Legend, and all the other survivors are like ‘Oh, we were not worthy to be on the same planet as the awesome amazingness that was Will Smith!’ and you kind of feel ripped off when no-one goes ‘Damn that guy was a pain in the arse’ or gloats that they are alive and he’s not and therefore he’s a loser, of mocks his ‘I am the Last Man On Earth’ speech before doubling over in disparaging laughter.

Which is a) probably the only reason he agreed to finish shooting after the whole Last Man On Earth thing turned out to be a lie and b) what really actually sucks about this movie.

Unless you’re in a hotel room in Canberra and feeling too lazy to go out and actually DO anything, I’d give this one a big old miss and see Twelve Monkeys instead. It’s WAY more fun.

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