I Am Legend

As part of my decompression from my trip to Canada I took yesterday afternoon off to see the new Will Smith flick 'I Am Legend'. As a science fiction lover this movie met and exceeded all my expectations. Heck, there was even a scene where Will is doing pull-ups where even the most jaded of us will be gasping for air at the sight of his incredible six pack. During an interview that I saw on Sixty Minutes he talked about how he and his manager have plotted his movie career based on the fact that the best selling movies are science fiction, heavy with computer graphics and include a love story. It seems that Will has covered all three in this movie.

If you are a fan of '28 Days Later' some of this movie will seem old hat but I still think you will love this movie.

As a side note, I took particular notice of the audience at the Tuesday afternoon screening. The audience was split pretty evenly between men and women but I noticed about 50% of the men were there alone while the other half were with a female companion. The women were there with a male companion or a female companion (seemed to be mothers and daughters). I was the only single woman at the screening. Women don't go to the movies alone?

I noticed something else really odd ... about 90% of the men were very overweight with their bellies hanging over their belt buckles. About 70% of the women seemed to be just right... not too heavy, not too slim. Of the half dozen kids present only one of them seemed to be a little heavy. Given my informal and purely subjective poll why do I see news reports and ads focusing on over-weight women and kids when I mostly saw fat men?

Both of my observations may have had to do with the fact it was a science fiction movie but both facts seemed curious to me. Next time I will have to go to a different genre and see if I can repeat the results.