Usually I have some kind of way to intro my reviews that will relate back to a theme in the movie, but this time I couldn’t really figure anything out. So I will just say that this was one of my most anticipated movies of the year… and then I got a little bit turned off when the reviewes started coming in. And now I have finally sat my ass down to see it.
Ladies and gentlemen… “Chappie”.
In the not too distant future, science have evolved in such a way where it’s been able to switch out a good amount of human police officers with robots. And in the movie we follow young scientist Deon (Dev Patel) who created the world’s first sentient artificial intelligence. And then it’s put into a stolen police robot who is then activated and gets to learn about the world. And the poeple who stole are the members of the band Die Antwoord (God damn it…). So they basically teach this stolen robot they name Chappie (Sharlto Copley) to do bad shit and not to be a scientific marvel. Seeing the progression of a robot from innocent child to vastly intelligent adult would be so cool if they didn’t fuck around with the whole Die Antwoord thing. It isn’t interesting seeing Chappie be a gangsta (not gangster) and see these two assholes as his parents. There are so many great opportunities for great story development, but for this one they went in a pretty weird direction.
The characters in this movie are not interesting in the slightest… except for Chappie. The reason he works as a character is because he is pretty conflicted about who/what he is in this movie and he’s not a straigh-up dick. I will also say that Sharlto Copley with his performance capture really did a great job as Chappie, bringing so much humanity to the role. Dev Patel did a good job as Deon, but his character didn’t feel like he was properly used. The two members from Die Antwoord were not good in this movie. My guess is that they were hired because director Neill Blomkamp is a fan which I think is great, he can be a fan of them if he wants to… but that doesn’t make the decision to cast them in such major roles a good idea. Hugh Jackman I think did a fine job even though he is stuck in the same situation as Dev Patel where he wasn’t properly used since they went with the kind of wrong story opportunities. And Sigourney Weaver had nothing to do in this movie… she was a little unnecesary. And saying that about such a great actress really hurts my heart. So I guess to conclude this part: the acting was fine, but the characters (except for Chappie) were all pretty bad.
Finally… something I can give some praise! The score for “Chappie” was composed by Hans Zimmer and while it’s not one of his best, it’s still really good. It worked for the movie and helped bring out emotions and feelings that could not have come forth without the score. And as you may have expected, there is music by Die Antwoord in the movie as well. And while it didn’t ruin the movie, I have to say that I’m not a big fan. If you like it, great. But I am really not a big fan.
The directing in the movie is really good, but that is something I have come to expect from this director after having seen his two previous movies. The movie looks sleek and everything is overall well directed. And as in Blomkamp’s previous movies, the CGI looks pretty fucking amazing. Blomkamp knows how to blend it in perfectly without making it bloated and distracting, it all actually looked very real. And the action in the movie is pretty good as well, nothing spectacular, but still pretty entertaining. And I can say that despite the story being a little bit of a fail, it still kept my attention all the way through and it had a good pace to it. So it’s not slow and boring and dull and everything like that.
This movie was not very well received by the people or the critics. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 31% positive rating. On Metacritic it has a score of 41/100. And on imdb.com it has a score of 6,9/10.
So “Chappie” was a bit of a fuck up. The story missed every good thing it could do and none of the characters (except for Chappie) were interesting. However, the movie did have great music, fantastic visual effects and some good action scenes. Time for my final score. *Cough*. My final score for “Chappie” is a 6,97/10. While it’s not as good as I hoped it would be, I do still think it’s worth a rental.
My review of “Chappie” is now done.
I got nothing celver to say here.
TheMarckoguy 