Robocop meets Wall-E
Still riding off
of his success with District 9, Neill
Blomkamp’s latest sci-fi action thriller has many of the same themes and similar
visions of a future/alternate world. District
9, Elysium, and Chappie would make an extremely coherent
and obvious triple-feature, and it would also show the fast decline of
Blomkamp. I can only hope that this isn’t a sign of what he will do to the Alien franchise, which is set as his
next project.
The basic
premise of the film is not exactly flawed, though it reeks of Hollywood
contrivance. Taking place in Blomkamp’s now-familiar setting of South Africa (Johannesburg
is to Blomkamp as Manhattan
Not only is the
grating music highly over-utilized within the film’s soundtrack, Chappie falls
into the hands of Ninja and Yo-Landi Vissor, the members of Die Antwoord
playing themselves and the surrogate parents for Chappie in the film. Neither
are actors, and it shows. There is no reason to say it in any other way. They
are awful and dominate the movie with amateurish acting better suited for a bad
independent film from a first-time director. In a special-effects-driven
blockbuster such as this, these non-actors are an endurance test through every
scene of dialogue. And there are far too many of these scenes to make any of
the admittedly cool looking action sequences worthwhile.
It seems that
Blomkamp is a director that needs to be kept on a tight leash, so perhaps the
studio control of a massive franchise like Alien
will be exactly what he needs. It certainly can’t get much worse than this. The
Blu-ray release attempts to make up for the film’s shortcomings with a plethora
of extras. There is an assortment of additional footage, including extended
scenes and an alternate ending, as well as never-ending featurettes. There is
one about the joys of filming in Johannesburg (“Jozi: Real City and a Sci-Fi
Setting”), as well as a featurettes about cast and their characters (“Chappie:
The Streetwise Professor” “We are Tetravaal” and “Keep It Gangster”), and
visual effects (“Arms Race: The Weapons and Robots,” Bringing Chappie to Life:
The Visual Effects,” “Rogue Robot: Deconstructing the Stunts and Special
Effects.”). Only one of the featurettes is included on the DVD. Everything else
is exclusive to the Blu-ray, which is mastered in 4K. Also included in the
package is a digital HD copy of the film.
Entertainment Value:
8/10
Quality of Filmmaking:
6/10
Historical
Significance: 4/10
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