Box office
I, Robot was released in North America on July 16, 2004, and made $52.2 million in its opening weekend, finishing first at the box office. It grossed $144.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $202.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $347.2 million, against a production budget of $120 million.[3]
The film was released in the United Kingdom on August 6, 2004, and topped the country's box office that weekend.[30]
Critical response
I, Robot has an approval rating of 56% based on 225 professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.1/10. Its critical consensus reads, "Bearing only the slightest resemblance to Isaac Asimov's short stories, I, Robot is still a summer blockbuster that manages to make viewers think – if only for a little."[17] Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned I, Robot a score of 59 out of 100 based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[31] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[32]
Richard Roeper gave the film a positive review, calling it "a slick, consistently entertaining thrill ride".[33] Urban Cinefile called it "the meanest, meatiest, coolest, most engaging and exciting science fiction movie in a long time".[34] Kim Newman from Empire said, "This summer picture has a brain as well as muscles."[35] Washington Post critic Desson Thomas called it "thrilling fun."[36] Several critics, including Jeff Otto from IGN, thought it was a smart action film: "I, Robot is the summer's best action movie so far. It proves that you don't necessarily need to detach your brain in order to walk into a big budget summer blockbuster."[37]
In a mixed review, A. O. Scott of The New York Times felt it "engages some interesting ideas on its way to an overblown and incoherent ending."[38] Roger Ebert, who had highly praised Proyas's previous films, gave it a negative review: "The plot is simple-minded and disappointing, and the chase and action scenes are pretty much routine for movies in the sci-fi CGI genre."[39] Claudia Puig from USA Today thought the film's "performances, plot, and pacing are as mechanical as the hard-wired cast".[40] Todd McCarthy from Variety simply called it "a failure of imagination".[41]
Accolades
At the 77th Academy Awards, I, Robot received one nomination, for Best Visual Effects (John Nelson, Andrew R. Jones, Erik Nash, and Joe Letteri), which it lost to Spider-Man 2.
