Review ‘Chappie’ From The Editor

Back in the summer of 2011, this very writer drew up an editorial list of my top ten movie robots and their lessons. The rankings are filled with robots that made lasting impacts as characters and presences in noteworthy film classics. Each were created with a clear purpose in mind to serve their story and succeeded in that purpose. Altogether, those top robots had distinct and memorable qualities that resonated beyond the movie experience. Their uniqueness was their clincher.

The title robot at the center of “Chappie,” the latest science fiction film from Neill Blomkamp (“District 9” and “Elysium”) hitting Chicago area theaters this weekend, lacks in all of those statements about the best movie robots of all time. Both the film and the robot lack impact, presence, purpose, distinction, and, worst of all, uniqueness. It’s a shame too because there were some intriguing “big ideas” floating around in “Chappie” that could have developed into something that had the chance to be impactful, purposeful, distinct, unique, and resonating.

SYNOPSIS:

In the near future, crime is patrolled by an oppressive mechanized police force. When one police droid, Chappie, is stolen and given new programming, he becomes the first robot with the ability to think and feel for himself.

To say Neill Blomkamp’s third film is at least an improvement over his last, Elysium, is the faintest of praise and possibly the only consolation I can think of. That’s like saying a small tumour is at least better than a large one. That may be but both are clearly unwanted, and Blomkamp’s rise in stature as a ‘high profile’ film maker is part of the epidemic in underwhelming big-budget movies we’re getting force fed year after year.

“Slumdog Millionaire” star Dev Patel gets top billing as your central human character Deon Wilson. He is a successful robotic engineer working for Tetravaal, a weapons manufacturing company working in Johannesburg, South Africa. The city’s crime rate has been out of control for years and the human police force is constantly outmatched. You know it must be bad because Anderson Cooper is reporting about it on CNN (shameless cameo).

Under the business leadership of Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver), Deon develops a groundbreaking “Scout” robot design that is highly programmed and trained for police activity, security, and safety. The city officials sign on with Tetravaal’s initiative and the Scout force quickly begins to greatly reduce and eliminate small and large scale crime. The Scouts’ success draws jealously and envy from Vincent Moore (played by Hugh Jackman), a former solider and competing robot designer who has his own large and powerful “Moose” design that runs on a neural link via a live human operator. Bradley rebuffs Moore’s imploring for funding and action in favor of the sentient simplicity and cost-effectiveness of the Scouts. Deon, in the meantime, has improved his work even greater.

The film clearly wants to be regarded as clever and thoughtful, but it’s amazing just how stupid and empty it is. Why Chappie’s maker doesn’t call the police or alert the company who makes the robots is unfathomable, as is why he’d take a creation which can ‘judge art’ and ‘create music’ straight to the CEO of an arms manufacturer the very next day. Hugh Jackman’s character is allowed to carry a gun in an office and why he goes from disgruntled employee to bloodthirsty maniac just to use his ED-209 rip-off robot is beyond any logic.

Passing consciousness from a metal skull with a devise which was made to be controlled by a human mind? Yeah, that makes sense, Neill. Just like storing a human’s entire consciousness, the very thing which makes us human and cannot be fully explained by the greatest minds today…on a USB stick. The lack of thought in this film is quite outstanding. The reason stuff just happens in Blomkamp’s world is because without it he’d have to maybe read his own work after it has been written.

The idea of making a full-on satire about three scumbags who find and ‘raise’ a robot but teach it to be a complete reprobate because that’s all they know, and in the end they change because it does. Now there’s a good concept if I may say so myself. Alas, Blomkamp asks us to cheer for the lesser of two kinds of scum because there is inexplicably a worse bad guy involved to make the other criminals look… not so bad. Why do we ever care about these people when all they do is make us hate them even more with every word uttered? Perhaps there’s a message on parenting and nature vs nurture, but everything in his films is so blunt and without any subtlety in both writing and visuals, there is never anything to take away from what he shows.

“Chappie” needed to pick a gear and stick with it because it can’t be both without the knock-off comparisons and imbalance. You can’t put a gun in the hands of a “Short Circuit” Johnny 5 knock-off in a movie operating in a South African “Robocop” setting and get both effects. With a different approach or deeper mythos, this could have worked. Instead of diving intelligently into possible commentary on police action, the implications of artificial intelligence, and quantifiable human consciousness, “Chappie” settles for gunfights and deaths no one is going to care about.

The energy and thought is there, but misused. It make you miss the days of Paul Verhoeven who knew how to infuse sharp social commentary into fantasy or pulp films. “Chappie” had that kind of chance, planted seeds and all, to say something stronger and more purposeful, but fails like a Roomba stuck underneath a coffee table.

Rating: