Never before have I written about a movie that made me feel
so conflicted. Neil Blomkamp has made only one film, District 9, that has been
an overall critical success. His others, Elysium and now Chappie, have been
generally critically panned. Chappie follows those two films with a very
identical visual language and theme. I wanted to like Chappie desperately, but
it ends up being more of a hot mess than an enjoyable film.
Chappie follows the story of a robot designer, Deon (Dev
Patel), working for an international arms company. That company has hit it big
selling mechanized “scouts” to augment South Africa’s fledgling police force. Crime
is falling, and large sums of money in the form of government contracts are
rolling in. It feels very Robocop, right up to the giant two-legged robot laden
with a bunch of guns that still doesn’t quite work right. Deon wants to focus
his efforts on creating the world’s first true artificial intelligence but is
rebuffed by his corporate boss. Hugh Jackman plays a bad guy this time, and
seems to enjoy being cartoonishly evil for a change. Sigourney Weaver also
shows up to read lines and collect a paycheck. Eventually, the AI robot does
get made, but things go awry when he is kidnapped by two gangsters looking for
a means to pull off a big heist.
We’ll start off with the good. One thing Neil Blomkamp does
well is style and atmosphere. His movies always have a certain level of
industrial grit to them. Two of them take place in inner city slums of South Africa,
while one takes place in a futuristic slum of Mexico that looks just like a
modern day slum of South Africa. The tech looks really neat, the robots in this
film have a great design, even if they feel a bit recycled from Elysium. (I
imagine that there’s some credence to the idea that all of Blomkamp’s movies
take place in their own shared universe). The effects for the robots are also
fantastic. Its nearly impossible to tell if they are CGI or some type of
practical effect at any given time. Some of the action scenes are fun.
Unfortunately, that’s about it. My biggest issue with the
film was the South African rap duo Die Antwoord, which play two gangsters that
kidnap Chappie the robot. They have a huge role in the film, and are mostly
just really super obnoxious. Every scene they are in is cringe worthy. I can
imagine some others being forced to turn this movie off. Not to mention they were apparently a huge nightmare to the cast and crew, resulting in rewrites after
certain actors refused to film scenes with them.
The plot, while trying to pretend it’s trying to do
something interesting, really isn’t. It’s like a backwards Robocop: A police
robot gains sentience, and must discover his humanity through conducting
crimes. Or, if you will, a more violent South African remake of Short Circuit. I also wasn’t sure why an
AI had to behave like an infant or child. I can understand having to learn to
understand human motivation, but to have the robot start out like a literal
babbling baby was an odd choice. There were a couple odd plot devices as well-
Chappie is able to interface with a computer using a neural helmet designed for
a human. If he doesn’t have any brains, how does it work? Why doesn’t he just
plug himself into the computer? Are we supposed to believe it’s a “soul”
detecting helmet? There’s some other head scratching scenes as well, including the
silly computer code typed on a keyboard that makes the AI program run.
Bottom Line- 2 out of 5- Mostly style over substance,
and mostly just loud noise instead of any type of intelligence. It’s a fun type
of dystopia until you really meet your main characters. If you liked Blomkamp’s
other films it’s at least worth a rent, but it’s the least strong out of the
bunch.
