CHAPPIE

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs

GRADE: D
Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Sigourney Weaver, Hugh Jackman, Yolandi Visser and Ninja
Screenplay Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
Directed By Neill Blomkamp

Rated R (Violence, Profanity, Vulgarity, Drugs)


Director Neill Blomkamp's films are hardly for everyone's taste, but in the past he has undeniably showed a unique vision, with ultra violent but strangely thoughtful science fiction such as District 9 and Elysium.

His latest film, Chappie, is not nearly as violent as those two, though it does carry an R-rating and feature a lot more violence than it's add campaign suggests. Unfortunately, it's not thoughtful, either. In fact, Chappie may be the dumbest science mainstream science fiction film I've seen in a while.

Chappie tells the story of a robot who is designed as a member of the robotic police force in Johannesburg, South Africa (which is the center of all civilization in every Neill Blomkamp yet barely even exists in any other movies, suggesting that just maybe we should find a happy medium.). Dion Wilson (Dev Patel) has had great success creating these robots, much to the chagrin of a co-worker, Vince Moore (Hugh Jackman), who has created his own robots that are controlled by human via remote (Vince doesn't trust machines because they don't have souls.).  But Dion has bigger palns than just making automatons. He wants to create artificial intelligence. But problems arise when Dion's intelligent robot is stolen by gangsters.

This movie is a painfully forced rehash of everything from Short Circuit and Robocop to Blue Thunder, and the only thing in the film we've never seen before is Yolandi's haircut. And while we are on that subject: as if Blombamp's films wasn't self indulgently South Africa-ccentric enough, why on earth (specifically, Johannesburg) did he think it was a good idea to make a movie set in the near future and cast the rap-rave duo Die Antwoord as characters baring their own names? They are not without presence, but they are also irritating as hell and if you know who they are, it's very intrusive. (A news report with Anderson Cooper as himself is also a bad choice.).

It's good to see Dev Patel in a lead, but he seems like the bastard son of Newton Crosby and his weird Indian sidekick Ben in Short Circuit. But at least he fares better than Hugh Jackman, who plays like the bastard son of Crocodile Hunter and Flash Thompson from Spider-Man, with a touch of religious zealotry thrown in for good measure

The extremely talented Sharlto Copley does to motion capture and voice for Chappie, but Blomkamp seems to have neglected the "move like a robot' element in directing him. It's a very energetic performance, and he does succeed in giving Chappie a sense of humanity, but he's also too frenetic and unfocused. This is as blatant a case of director falling so in love with his star that he forgets to direct him as I've ever seen, which is sad.

In the end, the best that can be said about the science of the film is that it's not quite as stupid as Transcendence, and neither the dramatic elements or the action really work. But on the bright side, they are both better than the comedy, which is consists mostly of "Hahahaha! Baymax just said the F-word!"

But Sigourney Weaver still looks great, which is the only level on which this movie makes you at all excited for Blomcamp's new Alien franchise movie.