Chappie Review
By Colton Gomez | 03/29/24 | 11:49 P.M. Mountain Time
Action, Sci-Fi | Rated R | 2 hrs | Film Release Date: March 6, 2015
Neill Blomkamp’s third entry in his unofficial “District 9” trilogy is perhaps the worst of them. The first entry was spectacular, the second, “Elysium” was far from perfect, but was okay as a film. “Chappie” is so unbelievable as a plot and story, that not even Sharlto Copley’s loveable persona as the titular robotic character could save this film. There are far too many inconsequential characters given screen time, many of which are completely unlikable and unsympathetic.
The plot for the film is this: In the future of advanced technology, Gangster Ninja and his gang need $20 million to pay off the local kingpin for coming up short on their last delivery. To do this, they hatch a plan to find the creator of the locally dominant robotic police force and force him to give them the remotes, so they can switch them off. They need the robots off so they can safely rob a money transport that is somehow transferring $600 million. The creator of the robot installs a new program of sentience and learning into “Chappie” when the gangsters kidnap him and make him work for them. From here, Chappie is a robot with the mind of a child who learns about the world, love, death, and complex humans who lie. The film leads up to the events of the “heist” which certainly gets less screen time than the annoying and useless characters who inhabit this film.
This is a rogue AI story, where the robot is friendly and does what humans tell him to do. That is, until he learns that the gangsters are telling him to kill people, steal for money, and lie to him, but somehow, he still likes them. Humans try to poison Chappie against each other, and it is really a tired plot that is so dimly conceived it is insulting.
Sigourney Weaver heads the manufacturing company of these police force robots, all of which are subservient to humans and have no real mind of their own. Deon works for the company and oversees their manufacturing and repairs. For a company about advanced robotics and engineering, they have the weakest in-house security that would be put to shame by a Denny’s. Lackadaisical booth guards, key cards, cameras that no one seems to be paying attention to, and an unguarded “guard key” that controls all the software updates for the police force robots—just a sign in, sign out sheet. Even when this amazingly powerful key goes missing, the thief, Chappie’s inventor, Deon, is told he has until the end of the night to return it, when he wasn’t allowed to take it home in the first place… The key is in Chappie’s head and gets stolen, because Deon has a rival that is making his competing robots fail. The rival, Hugh Jackman, plans to use the key to erase all software of the police force robots so they fail, and his robots get their debut.
This movie chooses to be stupid, and I cannot accept that. There are certain moments where, if the people are who the movie says they are, would never be in the situations they find themselves in. Some call it the “idiot plot.” The genius Chappie inventor, Deon, steals a robot slated for demolition after being told by the head of the company that he cannot use this robot for his consciousness experiment. Nobody checks out the missing robot, nobody comes looking for the key, nobody asks where he is when he goes missing from his desk for the majority of most days. Company resources are flying off the shelves for criminal purposes, vans go missing, and no one cares until the movie decides it is time to care, because it needs conflict here but not there.
The characters of the gangsters are possibly some of the worst ever to be put to film. An annoying trio of dimwitted hotheads who do not understand technology, take over Chappie and teach him how to be a gangster. Yolandi, Ninja, and Amerika are the names of these characters we spend the majority of the film with. Yolandi is a stay-at-home gangster who is left behind on most errands until the big (tiny) heist at the end. Most of the time, she argues for Chappie’s independence and for others to “leave him alone,” but spends time reading to him, instilling her values in him, and insisting that he call her “Mommy.” Not a shred of romance or chemistry is detected between Yolandi and Ninja, who has Chappie call him “Daddy.” Nevertheless, the film tells us they were in love or something as Ninja looks at her pictures and sadly throws them into the fire. Okay. Sure, just move it along.
The runtime feels a lot longer than its two hours, and that is because nothing of importance really happens. This is a film about Chappie (or so I thought), but really does not treat him as a significant character. Mostly its about the gangsters and Deon fighting for control of Chappie, who is essentially a child. I suppose that is the point of the film, to show humanity’s failures of controlling too ambitious a piece of technology that exposes the cracks in our species and brings us off the high horse of planet earth’s dominators. The overall message of the film is good, but it is so frustrating to watch and does not feel satisfying when it ends. Yolandi in particular got on my nerves because of her self-assigned role as Chappie’s mother/protector and desire to intrude on so many scenes where her presence added absolutely nothing but took all the focus and emotion out of them.
The film has no understanding of technology and that is clear. It shows consciousness being downloaded and installed in a matter of seconds, it shows a titanium robot using a neural helmet to transfer its own consciousness in a matter of seconds and uses a small fortune of connected PlayStation 4s to act as a power source to power Chappie’s coding work—which he seemingly just knows how to do now, after many excruciating scenes of seeing him not being able to speak. This particular critique is very narrow and only somewhat contributes to the film’s quality but seeing Chappie mime and parrot everything the gangsters and Deon do with complete accuracy, even in their tone of voice, and not seeing him be able to properly say “motherfucker,” and instead constantly say “fuck mother,” is beyond irritating.
I really want Neill Blomkamp to succeed, and it is a shame that this movie turned out to be so underwhelming. The visual effects are amazing, for the most part, and Sharlto Copley’s performance is the only thing in the film worth watching.
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