This is a tough film to review as I wasn’t really sure if I was enjoying it or not even as I was watching it, and then couldn’t remember much about it the next day. I know that it’s not very good, but I did find myself wanting to like it more than I did.
What Works: Any science fiction movie that’s working from an original premise is already off to a good start in this uphill battle against sequelization and remakes, and Neil Blomkamp is one of the few sci-fi oriented directors still determined to give us something new—for about five more minutes since even he is about to direct an Alien prequel—and so it is that “Chappie” is worth rooting for, not to mention the character itself. [As the voice of Chappie the robot, the unseen Sharlto Copley finally finds a good fit for his mannered style.] Dev Patel is solid as the robot’s creator, but the film really belongs to Chappie, who drew my attention in every scene and usually with just the raising and lowering of his ear-antennaes. The film’s score is also noticeably excellent, and that’s not something I usually notice is making the film better as I’m watching it, but most of “Chappie”‘s most affecting scenes wouldn’t work nearly as well without it.
What Doesn’t: It has some of the same faults that Blomkamp’s first two movies did: villains that are either cartoonish or uninteresting, and a final third that gets lost trying to do too many things at once. But “District 9” and “Elysium” were better movies with better actors and characters that we cared about, while Chappie’s only sympathetic character (besides Dev Patel) is a robot. Everyone else is either a heartless corporate drone or a feral, low-life criminal.
The would-be “gangstas” in this movie are so unrelentingly rancid and nasty-looking that any eventual violence that comes to them inspires more relief than suspense. And I know that it’s kind-of the point to make the robot the most human character in a sci-fi work, but that point has been made more skillfully in better movies like “Blade Runner” or “2001.” Plus, the trailers pull a bit of a bait and switch with Hugh Jackman’s villain. They portray him as being anti-artificial intelligence but that’s really only because he’s an engineer working on a rival defense robot. It’s more professional competition than philosophical, and that may sound like a minor difference but Jackman’s career never drew me in enough to hate him or empathize with him.
What I Would Have Done Differently: It’s hard to put my finger on the point where Chappie goes wrong, and it’s a confusing movie to pick apart and say exactly why it didn’t move me more than it did. It would take a team of top film scholars, but the most revealing thing about the movie is that they probably wouldn’t care enough to analyze it. All in all, even though it’s unsatisfying, it’s still interesting enough to watch…eventually…if you get the time one day…one day down the road…and probably for free.