Chappie (4 out of 10) – Directed by Neil Blomkamp; Written by Neil Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell; Starring Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackmans; Rated R for violence, language and brief nudity; 120 minutes.
“Chappie” is a heartwarming wreck of a story about a reconstructed Police Scout Robot (portrayed by the always really weird and interesting Sharlto Copley) that has a new AI program uploaded into his digital brain by well-intentioned robot engineer Deon (Dev Patel doing his best Fisher Stevens impersonation). He is then hunted down by the evil robot engineer (played gleefully by Hugh Jackman) because of some moral thing about AIs being evil and him being Catholic and stuff. I really don’t know, that is all glossed over. And that is the problem with the whole movie.
For instance, it also stars Die Antwoord, the super strange South African rap-rave group, and they don’t sing or anything. Also, Die Antwoord can’t act. Sigourney Weaver turns in the blandest performance of her career (and she was in “The Village”) as a clueless head of a technology corporation who doesn’t see any value in having a major breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence research. Hugh Jackman sports a minimalist mullet-like haircut, just because. Anderson Cooper shows up briefly at the beginning in a fake news story and then never shows back up.
It is the kind of movie that makes a whole bunch of promises at the beginning about the kind of story that it is going to be and then decides to be something else entirely. For no reason whatsoever.
In fact, “Chappie” is like an extended Die Antwoord Music Video except without any of the music.
Seriously, it is just a mess. An unmitigated mess. A huge, frightening mess. It is no wonder that director Neil Blomkamp signed so quickly to do “Alien 5”. This is the kind of movie that can kill big budget tent-pole careers.
There was a point early in the movie – during the birth of Chappie scene, when he was in effect first created – that an undefined evil joy came over me as I realized that this movie was going to be flat out no excuses awful. This “Wake Up” scene was supposed to be full of wonder and discovery, with Chappie first coming online and experience the beauty and strangeness of the world, but instead it wasn’t any of that. It was laugh out loud ridiculous, but the camera work and the background music and the editing told us that it was moving and meaningful.
Sensibility wise, it is kinda like a mash-up of “Being There” and “Reservoir Dogs” but with robots and explosives. And it is not a mix that works in any way at all. As far as scripting goes it is really just a series of action beats, plot points, and marginal exposition. There are no real characters in the movie, just roles. Plot facilitators.
In vision and scope it is ambitiously mediocre, which allows it to end up being unredeemingly bad. It wants to be a comedy, but it also wants to be grim social commentary, yet it also wants to be big budget breathless action blockbuster. And it just doesn’t work.
Could it be that Blomkamp has no knowledge of the long, long history of similarly themed movies over the last 50 years, like “Short Circuit”, or “Robocop”, or ‘Iron Giant”? All effortlessly better movies. He has to, and to have not learned anything from any of those movies is near unimaginable, yet here we are.
Let’s hope that Blomkamp has learned something from this endeavor, and hires real writers for “Alien 5”. And is saddled with some stone cold killer studio producers to ride herd on him.
As much as we say we don’t want our films to be made in that kind of environment, sometimes it is a good thing, because he is a truly gifted visual stylist who knows how to shoot action and integrated effects pieces. That is not an easy skill to master. He just needs to learn that story has to come first, Once he does that, then he can probably do anything.
In the meantime, don’t see “Chappie” at the theater. Wait for it to be on Netflix, which should happen quickly, or on Amazon Prime. And then watch it slowly, in pieces, over multiple frustrated and interrupted viewings.