Review of Chappie (2015) by Patrick L — 19 Aug 2015

"What a terrible title, Somebody should've replaced the H with an R".

Movie Review: Chappie.

Date Viewed: March 6 2015.

Directed By Neill Blomkamp (District 9 and Elysium).

Screenplay By Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, Based on the short film "Tetra Vaal" by Neill Blomkamp.

Starring: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Ninja, Yolandi Visser, Hugh Jackman, Jose Pablo Cantillo and Sigourney Weaver.

We have seen great movie robots over the years like C-3PO, R2-D2, The Terminator, the HAL-9000 computer and WALL-E but Chappie is not one of them. Congratulations Skids and Mudflap, you guys are no longer the most annoying robots in movie history. Neill Blomkamp's third feature film "Chappie" is noisy, incoherent and mean-spirited. The premise of this movie is that an armored-plated police robot gets reprogrammed by a scientist and three rapper-gangsters and get it to speak, draw a picture, read books and fight. Sharlto Copley voices and plays Chappie through a motion capture performance and his performance is completely grating from start to finish. "CHAPPIE LOVES STORIES", "CHAPPIE MUST FIGHT", "CHAPPIE IS READING A BOOK", "CHAPPIE LOVES YOU", "WHY WOULD YOU LIE TO CHAPPIE!", "CHAPPIE WILL DESTROY YOU!", see what I mean!

I couldn't stand this character.

Set in the near future, Johannesburg is dealing with a high crime rate so a tech company named Tetravaal and the South African police force team up to build attack robots in order to reduce crime in the city. A robot scientist named Deon Wilson wants to use a damaged police robot and reprogram it. Why? He wants the robot to think and speak like a human but Tetravaal's CEO Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver) refuses to let him test artificial intelligence on a police robot. Soon, Deon gets kidnapped by cartoonish rapper-gangsters and they want him to reprogram the police robot and use it to fight off "Hippo" (Brandon Auret), the king of crime in Johannesburg.

The rapper-gangsters are played by real-life rap artists Ninja and Yolandi Visser and Jose Pablo Cantillo. Deon wants to stay with Chappie but Ninja throws him out of his hideout. Meanwhile, a robot engineer named Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) is angry at Michelle for not letting him use his giant attack robot named MOOSE. Soon, Vincent looks for Deon and his damaged robot in the city and when he finds him and Chappie, he discovers that the robot can not only think like a human but he can draw a picture as well. This news disturbs Vincent and Michelle, who both think that a thinking robot could be the end of mankind. In order to terminate the robot, Vincent shuts off every police robot in the city and use MOOSE to destroy Chappie and his friends.

Mashing bolts from other movies like "RoboCop", "Short Circuit", "Three Men and a Baby" and "Transcendence", "Chappie" is a futuristic clunker. I couldn't care less about this movie, it has a robot who isn't emotionally compelling and a plot that is convoluted and preposterous. You thought the gangsters were cartoonish, Hugh Jackman must've escaped from an episode of "South Park" because his character has no soul or anything else to him at all. Dev Patel and Sigourney Weaver don't have much to work with and I think that Neill Blomkamp (District 9) got lost in this dark sci-fi tale. The whole idea of a police robot (with artificial intelligence) being raised by rapper-gangsters just sounds awful and strange. With a more intelligent script, "Chappie" could've worked but it doesn't have a lot to say, it just lies there like a dog waiting for it's owner to play fetch.