Our Movie Review: Chappie (2015)

Why we watched it: Really liked Blomkamp first movie

Our rating: 2 out of 5 stars

His review: I have this fear of Neil Blomkamp taking the same path as M. Night Shymalan. Each has strong debuts, but haven’t maintained the same skill in telling compelling stories. While I really liked Shymalan’s second and third films—Unbreakable and Signs, respectively—most of his work sense has not been as effective. While I appreciate this visual style oin telling a story, the narratives have struggled to work. The Village lacked a logical conclusion, and The Happening was simply a disaster. His works since haven’t been much better.

Blomkamp hasn’t fared much better in his second and third films. He explores interesting ideas, and his settings (Mexico City and Johannesburg) bring a context of race, class, and economics that give layers to this ideas. The problem that has happened with Elysium and now Chappie is that the stories he’s telling don’t hold together. Big ideas are great, and at the heart of what science fiction does. I read a few reviews that praised his ideas, despite the problems with the films. But these are films, not science documentaries, and when the stories don’t work, the ideas don’t work.

After the first hour, I was so annoyed with the characters and the story that I was struggling to continue. By the end, the action scenes and some of the character growth helped, but I went from annoyed to disappointed. Blomkamp needs to work on giving his bad guys more texture, or he’ll never escape the Michael Bay superficiality. How much are we supposed to dislike Hugh Jackman’s character—he’s a bully, a sadist, a zealot, and he sports a mullet! And the justification for his machinations don’t make any sense. Why would he be pushing for the civilian police to buy his war machine when he should be selling it to the military? And why would the corporation behind his project be not helping him sell it that military? The other bad guy, the ruthless criminal that gets the whole story rolling, is equally over-the-top “bad”, and ultimately just a plot device.

As for the plot, I don’t understand why Blomkamp felt the need for the whole criminal gang that raises Chappie—the characters are dislikeable, the coincidences needed for them to meet with Chappie are unrealistic, and their interactions with him are simply cartoonish. I kept thinking there was a better story to tell, but I was stuck with this one.

Sharto Copley does an amazing job with the voice and body movements of Chappie to make him believable, and as noted the action scenes are good. But overall this is not a good film, worse than Elysium and far from District 9. While I’ve given up on Shymalan, I still have hope Blomkamp can turn it around, find a better screenwriter (not himself) and return to making thoughtful, good movies.

Her review: For me, it was all about the lack of internal logic. How does an AI know to cower? Why does an AI rub at an upper lip that doesn’t exist? Why does his “eyebrow” move? None of this made sense to me, and then, because of that, I just couldn’t care about what happened. Otherwise, it’s such a shame to me that none of Blomkampt’s movies are on par with District 9 (though this movie seemed desperate to mimic that movie, right down the beats. Ugh).