'I Am Legend': 'Omega Man' rewrite is action-packed

"I Am Legend" is just plain fun. It's one of those extremely enjoyable big-studio movies that you come to expect from the likes of Will Smith. It's well done, quite scary, and it sucks you in with one of the fastest setups I think I've ever seen.

The film starts with a generic news program interviewing a scientist. She is announcing that after careful clinical trials they have developed a cure for cancer. We get to linger on this wonderful news -- and what it might mean for humanity -- for just a second or two before skipping ahead three years. The city of New York is suddenly abandoned and overgrown with vegetation. Something clearly went wrong and now everyone on the earth is dead; we're a minute into the film, maybe two. Now that's what I call getting on with the story.

Just as quickly we find out there are at least two survivors: Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) and his trusty German shepherd. We find them cruising at high speed through the empty streets of Manhattan hunting deer -- it seems Manhattan has enough vegetation to support a wide variety of animal life.

After the high-speed tour of the city, and a glimpse of the ins and outs of what it's like to be the last man on earth, Dr. Neville's watch beeps with an alarm; the sun is setting and it's time to get indoors.

It's no spoiler to tell you that something terrible lurks in the night, and an oppressive fear of that darkness has Dr. Neville quaking in his boots as he and his dog huddle in a bathtub.

Though the film fills in the blanks by short and well-developed flashbacks, the action sequences are where it's at. Mixed with Smith's portrayal of loneliness, fear and never-say-die attitude, the total package is quite impressive. There's no question Smith knows the action film formula and is good at what he does.

In case you didn't know, "I Am Legend" is a rewrite of "The Omega Man," the Charlton Heston film of the early '70s. It was a pretty good action flick back then, and "I Am Legend" hasn't failed it. The addition of the incredible special effects to make New York look three years abandoned is outstanding. They couldn't have built a set that looked any better. The technology has gotten so good that I can no longer complain.

Though I can complain about the computer-generated humans. I'll try to not give anything away here, but the night people looked really fake.

Yes, they were scary, but you can easily tell they came out of a computer -- and I suspect the same computer that did "I, Robot." I just can't believe that the time and money spent on those computer characters wouldn't have been better spent on real actors.

Real night people chasing after Dr. Neville would have had audience members spilling their popcorn.

These new computer generated humans remind me of my niece on her first trip to Disney World. On the way home after a full week of the fantasyland, her parents stopped at a nature reserve that contained a certain species of monkey. My niece was not impressed. In fact she seemed uninterested. It wasn't until they were back home that they found out she thought they were fake monkeys. Yeah, they were probably the best fake monkeys of the trip, but, man, enough with the fake monkeys!