Cast: Neill Blomkamp good luck charm, Sharlto Copley does good work as Chappie. The fact that I often forgot that I was watching motion capture is a credit to how he played Chappie and, of course, the animators who brought Chappie to life. If nothing else, that makes the movie worth seeing. Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, and an underused Sigourney Weaver represent the corporate side of things. South African hip hip artists Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser are the street view for Chappie. No one particularly blew me away.
Plot: It's a little scattered. Slightly in the future, Scout bots are developed and deployed in Johannesburg to combat crimes and supplement the police force. Deon (Patel), the creator of the Scouts, develops a program that can give a bot consciousness. Yolandi and Ninja are small time crooks who abduct Deon as he uploads the program to his first Scout, creating Chappie, and take ownership of Chappie, training him to commit crimes for them. Vincent (Jackman) is a jealous co-worker of Deon's who wants to get his own bot used instead of the Scouts. He's onto what Deon is doing early and wants to use it to bring him down. You see, Deon's boss (Weaver) isn't too keen on his idea of giving consciousness to the machines (And who could blame her?). From that, the movies goes in several directions.
Elephant in the Room: It sounds like the robotics company is playing pretty fast and loose? The security is atrocious for the company that makes the Scout bots, so much so that I don't even think it was an oversight in the script. The only way for any of this movie to work is if the security for the company is on par with a temp. agency. Apparently, any employee can enter and leave any area, get any equipment, or arrive at any hour, with no security officers questioning anything. Way too much of this movie falls apart if you pick at this, which is a sign of a weak script. This shouldn't surprise me though. I had similar issues with Elysium. Blomkamp chooses to ignore actual human nature and instead have people act in ways that fit the story he wants to tell. It's just bad writing.
To Sum Things Up:
Chappie wants to be a lot of movies. It's Short Circuit in that we follow Chappie as he learns how to be "alive". It's Robocop in that we have the machines being used to enforce the laws of men. It's District 9 in that it's about people's prejudice against outsiders. It's Amadeus in that Vincent is always a step or two behind Deon. I'm bothered by how the beats of the story are so similar to Blomkamp's previous movies (District 9 and Elysium) and to diminished returns. This movie doesn't get me thinking in ways that I haven't before, which is not how I was supposed to come away from that movie. On the other side of things, it's a pretty boring action movie too. The things that I like about this movie (the motion capture, the South African setting, the development of Chappie's character) are not enough to make up for the lack of focus and holes in the story.
Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend
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