The book "I am Legend" has supposedly been made into a film three times (THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, THE OMEGA MAN as well as I AM LEGEND). However, all three are quite different from the story and in most ways they are inferior (ultimately missing the point of the book in the process). Had this Will Smith film actually stuck with the original story, it would have been well worth making. However, in many ways it was much closer to OMEGA MAN than the book. Now, considering that OMEGA MAN was a really cool sci-fi film AND the newest film didn't stick all that close to the book, you wonder why it was made in the first place. Oh, wait...it starred Smith, had a huge budget AND lots of special effects--that's apparently the only reason many films are made by Hollywood these days!! According to IMDb, they didn't even have a finished script before they began filming--and this just shows the contempt they had for the source material.

Now I am not saying that this is a bad film. It's very watchable and exciting--particularly if you have never seen OMEGA MAN. And, for people who care far more for special effects than plot, it is a pretty film. The scenes of the bridges leading out of Manhattan and the rest of the ruined city are incredibly realistic--too bad the story was actually supposed to take place in Los Angeles!

And, speaking of changes, he film also takes a lot of liberties including: making the plague victims more like mindless zombies than vampires, adding a dog to the story, completely changing the ending so as to make a point that is the opposite of the novel as well as attributing the plague to an accidental creation due to come cancer drug. Now granted, most of these mistakes (minus the dog) are in the other films--they were flawed as well. But, why keep distorting an excellent story and why make a film that looks better than the previous films BUT is essentially no better?!

My advice? Read the book and watch OMEGA MAN. Sure, OMEGA MAN is so unlike the original but it had a major cool factor. Perhaps it's because I am older, but seeing a crazed Charlton Heston machine gunning the zombies (led by the great Anthony Zerbe--a wonderful villain) is just more exciting than seeing Smith talking to his dog.

I'm a huge fan of Richard Matheson, whose classic sci-fi novels of the 1950s (such as this and THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN) helped make the decade fun. I AM LEGEND has been filmed a couple of times before, as LAST MAN ON EARTH with Vincent Price and THE OMEGA MAN with Charlton Heston. Both were fun productions that threw their own slants on the source material, but neither of them could be called a classic. Much the same can be said of this production.

On the surface, I AM LEGEND is a perfectly serviceable movie. I'm no fan of Will Smith as a serious actor, but even I'll admit that he does pretty well here as a tormented, lonely hero. He builds a fine rapport with his canine companion for much of the production. The big budget nature of the production means that this looks visually impressive, with lots of ruined cityscape shots and eerie foreboding built up along the way.

What goes wrong, then? Well, two things. Firstly, the film is wrong-footed by some dodgy CGI work, firstly in the form of the wild animals that have taken over New York, and secondly in the nature of the vampire menace. They're entirely animated by computer graphics, Gollum-style, but they don't look particularly convincing, and the more we see of them, the worse they look. Naturally, the most frightening scenes are those early on in which the foes remain unseen, Smith and his pet crouched in a bath while their cries echo eerily through the night.

The second problem is that the film loses its way as it progresses, wasting interesting thematic elements and becoming a straightforward action flick. And the last third is unforgivable, throwing in a twist I found hard to swallow and which makes a mockery of the book. It's a shame, because in the right hands this could have been the stuff of, well, legend.

By all means, I Am Legend is not a terrible movie, but it is a movie that could have been much better. The concept is absolutely great(coming from someone who has very little knowledge about the book),and the film does start off brilliantly with plenty of emotional impact and a convincing enough chemistry between Will Smith and the dog, who is very cute and believable. The film does look great too, the scenery and photography are excellent and apart from the odd dodgy CGI the special effects are pretty good also. There is also an intense and brooding soundtrack, decent direction and a brilliant, charismatic lead performance from Will Smith.

However, where I Am Legend isn't so successful is that under this surface it has its heart in the right place, but there are moments in the second half of the film on the surface that comes across as hollow. Speaking of the second half, this is where the film does fall down in an attempt to be too ambitious, and in the process situations are underdeveloped and characters fall into cliché territory and you don't feel enough for them emotionally. The film feels overlong, with the ending taking longer to evolve than it ought to have done and the pace in an attempt to explain everything becomes very sluggish. And there is a problem with the explanations, some of it does feel under-cooked. The script is also uneven, in the first half it was poignant and credible, but like the characters it becomes increasingly clichéd.

Overall, worth watching but I couldn't help thinking it could have been more. 5/10 Bethany Cox