Chappie (2015) review

Neil Blomkamp, director of District 9 and Elysium recently apologized for the latter, admitting he had relied too much on its appealing concept and neglected to pay the same attention to a satisfactory screenplay. This statement sounds sincere on one hand, but we would appreciate it more if it meant that Blomkamp has learned from his mistakes. Unfortunately, everything he accuses his previous film for can be used to describe his new one as well…

Chappie is, precisely, a promising idea that would need a much more powerful script in order to be effective. This idea is the creation of a form of artificial intelligence (Chappie) that needs to discover the world from the beginning, in a process that resembles a child’s upbringing. As a concept, it contains an intrinsic humane element, as well as the potential for substantial parallelisms with man himself and the formation of his perception of the world. But most of all, it shows that Blomkamp can still demonstrate a sense of filmmaking creativity: he consciously tries to follow the rules of different genres simultaneously, creating a violent, R-rated… “family” film, with no intention of compromising by subjugating one genre to the other.

As expected, unfortunately, this is exactly what the South-African director stumbles upon. He creates a film that doesn’t really know what kind of film it wants to be. The violent action often gives its place to a humane approach and the latter to the lighthearted humour, with the film being disorientated and almost never truly functional. Moreover, the music composed by Hans Zimmer, despite being otherwise interesting, often seems to force the transition from one tone to the other, thus only making it clumsier. Chappie’s biggest flaw, however, is its script’s incapability to convince about almost anything that happens throughout the film. From the criminals’ transformations into either tender parental figures or repentant heroes to the naively humanized robot Chappie, the film’s concept feels annoyingly rough. Also, some details like the battery sign on Chappie’s chest and the obvious product placements cannot but make things worse. As a result, the sentimental elements seem melodramatic and the action never feels exciting, with the humour being the only actually amusing thing left, although it tonally confuses the film even more.

It is worth mentioning that here, apart from certain hints about religion, the social subtext of Blomkamp’s previous works is absent. Lastly, Yolandi Visser and Ninja, members of South-African rap group Die Antwoord, star in the film as themselves for some reason –and some of their songs are included in the soundtrack. Ninja is at times enjoyably comical, whereas Yolandi Visser should have given a considerably stronger performance for her poorly written character to feel engaging.

Chappie has undoubtedly good intentions but it would need a more elaborate screenplay in order to be sufficiently solid and convincing. Blomkamp misses a second chance (after decent, but not memorable Elysium) to live up to the triumph of District 9, only this time, his sci-fi vision seems worryingly ‘blurred’…

(2 out of 5 spinning tops)