Chappie

I feel sorry for directors that open with a stunning film as for the rest of their career, they will have to try and match that. For instance, M. Night Shyamalan has been trying to match the impact The Sixth Sense made by putting stupid and unnecessary twists in every film he now does, and it’s made him and his films a laughing stock. And currently, Neill Blomkamp is looking like he could end up with the same problem. His first film was District 9, which I loved. However he then made Elysium, which was disappointing. So can he get back on form with Chappie?

In the near future half of the police force are robots called scouts which were made by Deon (Dev Patel, Slumdog Millionaire). However when Deon is denied by his boss Michelle (Sigourney Weaver, Aliens) the chance to experiment with artificial intelligence, he goes rogue and takes a broken one to do it in his own home. However he and the scout are kidnapped by Ninja (Ninja, First Feature Film) and his gang, who then help to give the scout AI, who is then called Chappie (Sharlto Copley, District 9).

After the rough reaction Elysium got from critics, you can see that Neill Blomkamp is trying to return to what made District 9 a success with audiences and critics. The film is set in South Africa, we are back in the near future though we’re focusing on the lower end of society and Sharlto Copley is back as the star. It’s nice that Blomkamp is obviously listening to us and wants to make good films, but this does lead to a feeling of familiarity. Just like in District 9, the film starts off acting like a documentary before completely forgetting about for more typical blockbuster action. Then there is the ending which seems like a more blunt ending of Disttrict 9. There is a feeling that Blomkamp has made this film before.

There is more familiarity that doesn’t help the film. I’ve seen that some people compare Blomkamp to Paul Verhoeven because they both did blockbuster sci-fi that tried to make a point. And Blomkamp is obviously trying to be close to Verhoeven is one way because he rips off parts of Robocop and thinks we won’t notice. One of the subplots is that Vincent (Hugh Jackman, The Prestige) wants the police to drop the scouts and use his design, the MOOSE which looks so much like RoboCop’s ED-209 I’m pretty sure someone is going to sue. Then you’ve got the whole robot becoming more human thing and it makes me sure that this film started as that RoboCop remake that was released last year before splitting into its own thing.

Oh about that subplot, it’s completely pointless and irritating. Hugh Jackman’s performance doesn’t help as its more over the top than a kabooki theatre actor, but it just detracts from any point the film was trying to make. We have a pretty nice storyline over in this disused warehouse where an innocent Chappie is being corrupted by humanity and that does make a good point about why maybe even if we can, we shouldn’t do AI. It’s fairly original and interesting. However then we get MOOSE marauding through South Africa trying to kill Chappie and we get a pretty bland action scene which makes you forget about any point this film was making. Verhoeven at his best could mix awesome action and political points but currently Blomkamp can’t.

Now onto Chappie himself though. I think he’s brilliant. It’s a great motion capture performance by Sharlto Copley, who really sells the baby/toddler phase that Chappie goes through at the start of the film. The mannerisms of the robot are great and you do feel for it when Ninja is mistreating him because he doesn’t fit into his plans. But the masterful part of this is that when Chappie does start to commit crimes, you still like him because you feel that he’s been forced into this and that he’s just being naive. It’s all down to a great performance by Copley who needs more work.

Now everyone apart from Jackman everyone puts in competent to good performance, if Dev Patel can put in a solid performance in The Last Airbender he can do it anywhere, there is one issue. Apart from Chappie, you never care for the characters because they barely have any depth. Does Ninja care about anything else but this heist he’s planning? Doesn’t seem to be. Does Deon have any personality outside of making robots? I don’t think so. Does Yolandi (Yo-Landi Visser, First Feature) do anything other than be nurturing? Nope, definitely not. Because the characters are barely characterful, when the scenes towards the end of the film asks us to care, we simply don’t. And this film does act as if there is a bit emotional impact at the end, but it fails to land because we don’t.

Sadly this film seems to indicate that Neill Blomkamp is continuing to follow down the M. Nigh Shyamalan path of not matching your first film. The plot has a lot of unnecessary baggage in it, the characters are one note and it Blomkamp is treading over ground that is way too familiar. It’s not helped that a better robot AI humanity film, Ex Machina, was released a few months ago. Maybe Blomkamp can return to form with the Alien film he is making, but I’m starting to think that District 9 was just a massive fluke.

Best Moment: I do love meeting Chappie and the moments where he is simply trying to work out how to be human are quite sweet and are fairly original.

Worst Moment: The reveal of the MOOSE as you can feel the lawyers phoning people up from here.

2/5