The short stories in Isaac Asimov’s book “I, Robot” date back as far as 1940. All these years later, some of Asimov’s ideas are being pumped up into a big-scale summer movie.

I haven’t read the book lately, although I sure thought it was cool when I was 12. But it’s safe to say that some liberties have been taken with Asimov’s concepts, which have been tailored for a Will Smith action extravaganza.

Still present in the movie, however, are Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics,” which all robots have to obey. This is not just a device, either, but the core of the story.

Will Smith plays a detective in Chicago in the year 2035. He’s got a gripe against all robots, which have taken over many of the menial tasks in society.

Lo and behold, the founder of U.S. Robotics dies suddenly in a suspicious fall. The founder’s hologram (James Cromwell) gives Smith clues about the death, which leads to the revelation that there is something seriously wrong with the new model of domestic robot.

Like one of Microsoft’s Windows upgrades, the new robot is about to be unleashed everywhere in the world. The flaw in the system, however, means the robots might be able to contradict the Three Laws … and perhaps take over the world. (Don’t let Bill Gates hear about this.)

If “I, Robot” got to its meaty sci-fi ideas a little quicker, it might be a better movie. Standard police procedure slows it up, and the near-monochrome visual palette provides little pleasure.

Smith has a few of his patented one-liners, which do lighten the otherwise humorless mood. His chaste relationship with a U.S. Robotics scientist (Bridget Moynahan, from “The Recruit”) is nicely rendered, maybe because it’s not a love story but an investigative partnership.

But the action sequences come willy-nilly, and Bruce Greenwood is too familiar as the CEO villain. Much better is the main robot, body-doubled by actor Alan Tudyk (a la Andy Serkis as Gollum in “Lord of the Rings”).

There’s a lot of effects work here. It’s one of those movies in which the computer-generated world becomes one big slippery surface after you stare at it long enough. Granted, the sight of hundreds of robots scuttling like crabs across the surface of a building is astonishing, but even the cool stuff loses its zip.

The director, Alex Proyas, made the futuristic “Dark City,” which I found almost unwatchable. He can capture the big-bucks spectacle, all right, though he directs the other scenes with the metronomic regularity of, well, a robot.

The dictates of a summer movie require regular explosions and chases. This we expect. But it’s interesting to watch “I, Robot” and imagine what kind it movie it might have been without a big star and without the giant robot destroying the house and without the car chase on the automated highway. You’d have a suspense movie about ideas and technology, which sounds good. This movie’s action is a distraction.

Will Smith stars in “I, Robot.”