Review of Chappie (2015) by Prentice S — 26 Sep 2015

"Chappie" proves that artistic vision and creativity cannot overcome bad storytelling and poor narrative structures. Neill Blomkamp has made one great film ("District 9") and one okay film ("Elysium"), and now he has made "Chappie," an outright bad movie.

In his vision, Blomkamp fails to really bring a humanity to Chappie the robot. His development is interesting and could make the basis for a strong film, but he renders too much creative control to Ninja and Yolandi, making it too abstract to be real.

Dev Patel does decent work, but Hugh Jackman is the worst kind of villain. The writing for his character was one-dimensional to the nth degree and Jackman could do little with it. Shakey-cam is again a problem, as it normally is with Blomkamp's films, but this time, there was so much else wrong that it was extremely hard to forgive.