OK, film review time. Because I need more procrastination likes Tony Blair deserves £500,000 a year for a part-time job based on the fact he was PM.

I read "I Am Legend" sometime last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a different take on either a Vampire story or an apocalyptic future story.

Then I saw the new Will Smith film 'based on the novel' on Thursday evening. Sigh.

It's not a bad film. But it's not a particularly good film, and it deviates from the book something horrible.

Mild Spoilers begin here
Things get off to a bad start with the second or third scene, where the main character, Robert Neville, has his dog in the car. In the book, finding the dog - still alive and uninfected - was an important and powerful moment for Neville. Here, apparently, this wasn't right so instead the family had the dog from before the virus struck. Why? Dunno. Can't say anything was gained from it...

Secondly, the infected. In the book, they're vampires - or at least people exhibiting the majority of the traditional vampire characteristics. A large part of the book, and one of the interesting aspects of it, is Neville's research into what causes the strange things about vampires: why they can't stand sunlight, or garlic, or religious icons. So what are the things here? 'Darkseekers'. What? Why? Are vampires not popular enough any more, and we need them to be more zombie-like? This was the book that created the modern zombie genre?

Major Spoilers
And finally, the ending and general lack of consistency throughout the film. The ending in the book is a bit confusing but fairly powerful and stunning. In the film, it becomes a cliched "I've found the cure! Now I must give my life to keep it safe!" Minor credit goes to the film for actually making Neville die, but the fact is he remains a through and through hero, as opposed to the book where it becomes apparent he has become something of a monster, essentially making the reader question what makes a society and how far you can and should go in defending your old society against the new one forming. Bit better than the film, I think.

And yet, the film keeps hinting in the direction that it wants to go there! For example, Neville comments (in the film) that the Darkseekers have lost all civilisation, all remenants of human interaction. And yet there is clearly a 'leader' of them directing the attacks against Neville - which would fit with the ending of the book, but is completely ignored/forgotten about in the film. Eh?

End Spoilers
Anyway, for all that I still somewhat enjoyed the film - I like Will Smith as an actor, and the shots of New York deserted and overgrown are incredible (if arguably somewhat excessive for just three years' aging). The effects for the Darkseekers themselves are a bit questionable, but still...

Overall conclusion: See the film if you haven't read the book. Then read the book. If you've already read the book, then just read it again and remember how good it is.

Good post, LQ. I agree on all points. Read the book years ago and again last summer when I first knew a film was coming out. Saw the movie. I can't add much more to what you said here, except that I also like Will Smith. I just wish he had followed up "Happyness" with something in that more solid vein. Although I suppose the roles may not have been handy, what with Denzel still in the mix...

>I like Will Smith as an actor

Er... You have *seen* his movies haven't you?
Now that we've had "I am robot" and "I am legend" I'm hanging out for "I am overrated"

Six Degrees.

Kitten: *snigger*

MiB1 was class though, give the man that.

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Yes, ok. I'll pay that one. It was awesome. The sequel, however...

C'mon, anyone remember "The Fresh Prince of Bell-Air"?

Was that ever a hideous piece of work, but -unfortunately- very much of its time!

Guilty Pleasure Call *raises hand*



<< insert hilariously witty quote here >>

I have friends who know the theme tune. Do not think I ever saw more than a couple episodes though....

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Now that I think about it, not having given the matter much thought before, it seems a number of sitcoms which came out around the same time all relied on variations on the same set for the main house: enormous but tv-free main room with external door on the right, stairs to upper floor at the back, door leading to kitchen on the left, abnormally large kitchen with door through which neighbours entered uninvited and on a regular basis...Cosby, Fresh Prince, Family Ties. I think Growing Pains reversed the set and had the door on the left and the kitchen on the right, but it would appear that set designers didn't have much creativity in the mid-80s through early 90s.

HouseInTheWoods: Couldn't agree more. Well said!

Set-wise, anyone remember "Married with children", "Full House" and slightly earlier "Who's the Boss?"

Same basic layout.



<< insert hilariously witty quote here >>

Ok.... The oldsters are congregating. *moves somewhere else with less nostalgia* :P

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

No, Martin, it's more than that. Has to do with the whole idea of the 'situation comedy' I think and how it relates back to the theater. All those shows (even Friends) were filmed in front of a studio audience, you know. They were stage plays, but with the camera, you could do extra takes...

Exit, stage left!

The term 'situation comedy' is an oxymoron in the hands of Septic programmers/producers.

Apart from enjoying perving on Judith Light in 'Who's the Boss? and later on Alyssa Milano in 'Charmed' American "situation comedies" for me were as enjoyable as blocked sinusses. 'Proper' 'situation comedies' is what the Poms produced from the sixties to Fawlty Towers, with the exception of the George and Mildred programs.

Now given we have Fawlty Towers as an example I think that any show that does not come close to it should be aborted and the broadcast time spent showing the test pattern (shows me age, don't it! (shades of Wilfred Brambles!)).

Similarly with cinema. We don't need remakes of classics, UNLESS they are made BETTER, or in a few cases, can be made to show an alternative theme in the story. Like much of Shakespeare. Not all new versions are an improvement - I think Mad Max as the Moody Dane is a bit farfetched!

That's only my view and I would appreciate it if you all agreed with me in general, apart from the perving on Judith Light. (Did she ever appear in anything else?)

Was charmed a comedy? I thought any humour in that rubbish was purely accidental.

Anyway, there are SOME good modern sitcoms.

Like.

Um.

AH!

Peepshow!

There was a wonderful, but sadly very brief, series on BBC last year called "Outnumbered", partly ad-libbed and which had us in stitches each night. I hope it makes a comeback this year, otherwise we'll be stuck asking each other how many atoms are in a shadow or shouting "Stranger! Stranger!" and no one will understand why.

"The Office" and "Extras" both have come closest in recent years to capturing the brilliant cringe-inducing moments of Fawlty Towers when you knew Basil was going to take things too far and couldn't bear to look away. I enjoy "Scrubs", even with all the criticism it has taken in recent years -- it's still better than anything else I've found. At the moment we're really getting a kick out of "Moving Wallpaper" (we wouldn't watch "Echo Beach" without it).

Sitcoms are so much more tolerable without a laugh track trying to encourage us to laugh along or, in many cases, that a joke has just occurred and we were supposed to find it funny.

"Sitcom" is an interesting term but is applied a little too broadly these days, generally to any comedy TV show at all.

The 'situation' part of sitcom should be the deciding aspect: that is, that the show is based around an unusual set of circumstances which are themselves the centre of attention and basis of the comic incidents which arise. Two single men bringing up a baby is an example (the show's title fairly obvious here); so too is the plot of a hillbilly family living in a Beverley Hills mansion (or its inversion, a rich sophisticate from NY moving to the green acres of the backwoods).

An assortment of types (... a moo-vie star, the professor and Maryanne...) shipwrecked on an 'uncharted desert isle', qualifies technically as sitcom though whether it was ever humorous enough to be comedy is debatable - the 'very lovely lady' with three daughters who marries the man 'with three sons of his own', while sweet enough to rot teeth was most definitley nearly always a sitcom because the unusual - bunched - family structure provided the resolution of any of the problems which it didn't actually also cause.

While I enjoy 'The Office' and 'Fawlty Towers' is sheer genius, neither of these are really 'sitcoms' - the situations may provide context for much of the humour but the comedy (in both cases) transcends the situation. In this respect, in a true sitcom, the situation usually acts, not only as the genesis of the comedy, but as a limit to it.

The brilliant 'Seinfield' became the first (and only?) post-modern sitcom by steadfastly refusing to provide itself with any vaguely interesting situation at all - and quite often the humour revolved around the characters, confused and bickering, as they sought to define just what constituted (and hence how they should respond to) their current mundane set of circumstances.

Sorry to disagree Robert, but surely "Fawlty Towers" is the archetypical sit-com: virtually all the comedy comes from Basil's complete unsuitability for his job.

More recently "Spaced" and "Black Books" must count as great sitcoms.

Which begs the question...for which sort of job would Basil Fawlty be completely suited?

destruct-testing customer service procedures?

I thought that was the job that you went for last year, BK?