Wrongheaded in conception, eye-rolling in execution, “Chappie” is a childish blend of the cute robot goofiness of “Short Circuit” and the bloody-minded mayhem of “RoboCop.” It never finds its sweet spot and never, for one moment, works. ADVERTISING Wrongheaded in
Wrongheaded in conception, eye-rolling in execution, “Chappie” is a childish blend of the cute robot goofiness of “Short Circuit” and the bloody-minded mayhem of “RoboCop.” It never finds its sweet spot and never, for one moment, works.
Neill Blomkamp, the director of “District 9,” has utterly exhausted his supply of South African sci-fi ideas with this disaster, an excruciating two hours of your life you will fear, quite rightly, you will never get back.
A couple of years in the future, robots have taken over a chunk of Johannesburg’s police force, and judging by Hugh Jackman’s head, mullet haircuts have staged a comeback. Jackman, third-billed here, plays a weapons designer whose gigantic, heavily-beweaponed war robot is nothing the local police want anything to do with. They’re happy with the skinny, self-contained Scout robots that Deon (Dev Patel) designed, which has Jackman’s Vincent Moore bitter and resentful.
And Deon’s not done. He is on the verge of a sentient robot, one who can think and feel. If only the boss (Sigourney Weaver) would give him permission.
Blomkamp’s muse, his fellow South African Sharlto Copley, is the voice of Chappie. And a South African white rapper named Ninja plays … Ninja, a low-rent gangbanger who is plainly decades older than everybody he hangs with and those his gang is at war with. He dreams up a scheme to kidnap the chief robot designer so he can turn off the robots for a heist. That’s how Deon and his sentient prototype, which Ninja the gangster’s girlfriend (Yo-Landi Visser) promptly names “Chappie” the moment Deon boots him up, fall into their hands.
Cloyingly, Chappie behaves like a shy puppy the moment he comes to life. Amusingly, he picks up some of the profane, violent and guttural Afrikaner slang and accent from Ninja and Yolandi, whom he calls “Daddy” and Mommy.”
Yolandi, armed to the teeth and covered in tattoos, develops an instant mommy bond with the gadget that resembles the armed and armored machine that has been a menace to her and her kind. That’s head-slappingly hilarious. The head-slapping continues when the gangsters — get this — LET their scientist/kidnap-victim go, because he promises to return and “teach” Chappie language and morality and art every day after work. Kidnappings of the future are a 9-to-5 commitment, I guess.
Ninja tries to overcome the robot’s reluctance to take up violence and crime by showing Chappie that the “real world” is dog-eat-dog. Deon tries to get the mincing machine to master landscape painting.
Blomkamp wrings intentional laughs out of Chappie’s ineptitude at a life of crime and unintentional laughs at pretty much everything else. How to convince Chappie to kill? Tell him he’s to “make them go sleepy-weepy.”
“The Education of Little Chappie” drags on and on, with passing suggestions of how morality is taught and what constitutes “sentient.” Patel (“Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”) is a broad hysteric here, and Jackman a simple burly menace, a military man used to strong-arming wimpy engineers to get what he wants. And Copley? He’s just insipid as the voice of Chappie.
The most valuable player here has to be Blomkamp’s agent, who got him assigned to the next “Alien” movie before this abomination (co-written with his wife) got out and suggested that he’s run out of ideas on just his third outing as director. That’s thinking about the future.
‘CHAPPIE’
1 star (Grade F)
Cast: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman
Directed by Neill Blomkamp, written by Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell. A Sony release.
Running time: 2:00
MPAA Rating: R for violence, language and brief nudity
