Grade: B-

Verdict: Nifty Will Smith, nifty robots.

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
Cox News Service

Will Smith does the Will Smith Summer Movie Run several times in "I, Robot." You know, the one where he sprints like mad toward the camera, trying to outrun a fireball or a wall of water or whatever is looming behind him.

Thankfully, "I, Robot" is much better than its very noisy and very stupid-looking trailers. This movie has a pedigree: It's based on elements from the nine stories in Isaac Asimov's acclaimed anthology of the same name, and the director is Alex Proyas, the imaginative Aussie filmmaker behind "Dark City" and "The Crow." That doesn't mean "I, Robot" is a sci-fi masterpiece like, say, "Blade Runner," but it's worlds better than a mess like "Men in Black II."

Smith plays Del Spooner, a robophobic police detective living in 2035 Chicago. It's not a good time to hate robots since they have become so advanced they now do everything from walk dogs to demolish buildings. As one character points out, it's like being against the Internet because it might shut down all the libraries.

On the eve of US Robotics' largest robot rollout in history, Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), the man who invented the user-friendly robot, is found splattered on the floor of USR's lobby. Everyone except Del thinks it was a suicide. He's convinced it was murder, and his prime suspect is a robot named Sonny. Which, on the face of it, is preposterous since robots have been programmed to never commit a crime of any kind against humans. Hmmm ...

The spiffy-looking robots -- rows and rows of them, like in "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" -- are sleek, shiny studies in black and silver whose movements suggest the skeletons in "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad." And they can swarm up buildings like the unholy spawn of Spider-Man and the crustacean thingies from "Starship Troopers." The final battle is overdone (stupid and noisy, like the trailer), but it's still pretty amazing to watch.

Smith can do this kind of role in his sleep, and the thing I like about him is, with the possible exception of "Men in Black II," he's never phoned in a performance. He has too much respect for himself and his fans. But at age 36, he might think about giving the action-hero stuff a rest and returning to the kind of subtle work he did in "Six Degrees of Separation."

As a skeptical robot psychologist ("I make them look human") reluctantly drawn into Del's investigation, Bridget Moynahan is not only beautiful but makes the clichˇd role of the by-the-book scientist interesting. And special mention must be made of Alan Tudyk, who does for Sonny what Andy Serkis did for Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" movies. That is, he's an agile and talented actor whose movements and line readings provide the blueprint for the CGI Sonny. When Del, trying to prove robots' limitations, asks, "Can you write a symphony?" Sonny asks in return, "Can you?"