Chappie (2015) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / March 21, 2015

Neill Blomkamp seems to be channeling his inner Shyamalan, because everyone one of his films seem duller than the one that came before. I'll come right out and say I wasn't blown away by Blomkamp's breakout film District 9. I liked it, but the overblown last half hour or so almost completely ruined what came before. There, finally, it was revealed that Blomkamp couldn't help but succumb to predictable action that has fuck all to do with the narrative. Those issues and more all plague Chappie as well.

It’s sometime in the not-so distant future in (where else?) Johannesburg, South Africa where the police have been making use of police robots. They’re created by Deon from weapons manufacturer Tetravaal. When one night he succeeds in creating true artificial intelligence (with consciousness and so on), he takes the idea to his boss, who like all movie bosses are about as helpful as one ply toilet paper, refuses his request. He then steals a broken down robot to do it himself. However, much to his surprise, a bunch of hoodlums kidnap him, because they owe a rival a couple of millions and need a robot to pull off a heist. Deon is thus forced to ‘install’ a ‘consciousness’ within the robot which will turn him into something like a baby, albeit a very intelligent one. Much to the gang leader’s chagrin, the robot will need to be taught everything, language, morality and so on. The rest of the movie primarily shows how both Deon, the gang and the world influence Chappie.  

For a film called Chappie, it sure does take a damn long time for Chappie to make his first appearance. but when he does, the film almost risks becoming really interesting, but in true Blomkamp fashion, this turns the film into a rope tussle. On the one hand, you've got the interesting themes (consciousness, artificial intelligence, etc.) vying for attention and on the other you've got hammy acting, droning dubstep, boring action, sloooow-moooootion and dreadfully written characters all shouting 'look at me, look at me'. Not exactly a match made in heaven. To make matters worse, I can't decide whether or not the film even takes itself seriously which doesn't help matters during scenes that are obviously meant to be emotional.

For some reason, Blomkamp's had his films graced with highly talented actors who basically have nothing to do. In Elysium, it was Jodie Foster who had the thankless role of the pragmatically evil corporate scumbag and now it's Sigourney Weaver, although her character's not really evil. You've also got Hugh Jackman as the frustrated arms developer who really REALLY wants his giant armed robots to be given the green light. Also, he has a penchant for externalizing his every thought: "Where are you going?" "What the hell is going on?" It all raises the question: why get these big names when you're giving them nothing to really do? By the way, spoiler alert, the Jackman character is basically completely insane. At first, you’re like, ‘okay he’s the rival who wants his military robot approved.’ But before you know it, he’s threatening Deon in the workplace(!) and at the film’s end, he’s remotely controlling his robot and ripping people in half. You’d think these kind of psychological issues would’ve put him in an insane asylum or something…

But the real bummer is how this film tries to be everything, like I said before. You’ll be cringing during a montage featuring some of the worst dubstep you’ll ever find yourself subjected to and moments later, it’s grab-your-handkerchief time as some melodramatic plot twist is introduced, before the film again shifts into action overdrive riddled with an abusive amount of slo-mo. Just as Brandon Auret’s (who plays the bad guy in all of Blomkamp’s films) bad guy Hippo spouts toward the end, "I want everything!", so does Blomkamp seem to want it all. He wants action, drama, humor, interesting sci-fi, the full package. There's only one problem: he's simply incapable of doing so and this fact reasserts itself in every overwrought second of this cinematic clusterfuck. 

Oh, and whoever decided that this film needed (what I can only describe as) high-pitched girly, Anime-styled dubstep can fall of a cliff along with the rest of the musical hacks that hack and saw their way through today's films.