I enjoyed District 9, but poor word-of-mouth
put me off going to see Chappie at the cinemas when it came out earlier
this year. From what I gathered, while District 9 did strange and
original things, Chappie rested on its laurels and dished up a very
predictable rehash of old ideas from films like Short Circuit, A.I. Artificial
Intelligence and the more recent Robot & Frank. I also felt like
the casting of Die Antwoord was something of a cash-grab and it made me cringe
a little. I never really liked their weird-violent pseudo-gangsta schtick, though
I like ‘Cookie Thumper!’
But I still wanted to see the film, so last night we
watched it. And though it was far from perfect and the critical reception it
received was deserved, it was enjoyable and as a matter of fact, Die Antwoord
were about the only actors who managed to pull off their cartoonish roles, being
authentically cartoony.
The main problem here seems to be that half the cast
is taking everything very seriously while the other half think they’re in a
very campy sci-fi flick. Die Antwoord and those around them in the ‘gritty’
scenes, including the guy from District 9 as the likeable and childlike
Chappie, really are struggling for authenticity within a daft and childish
plot. The bigger-name stars, especially Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver, are
given paper-thin characters with horrible lines, and cannot elevate them into
something even vaguely believable. Dev Patel teeters between the two worlds and
ultimately isn’t convincing, and the montage of him coming up with ideas to finish
his sentient AI program is awful.
When the film fully embraces the daft concept and
goes for entertainment value or sentimentality, it works nicely: Chappie
convinced that the people driving expensive cars have all stolen them from
Ninja, or Chappie excitedly reading his children’s book to a loving Yolandi.
When it’s a sinister weapons developer letting anarchy descend on an entire
city just so he can show what his stupid mecha ‘Moose’ can do, it just falls
flat, and some of the awkwardness with Deon going back to see Chappie even
though he thinks Ninja is genuinely going to kill him is extremely clumsy.
I hoped Chappie would be in some way
challenging or highly idiosyncratic, but it fell short of that. However, taken
as something simple and fun, it’s an enjoyable feel-good film. Also, while the open
ending probably rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, I actually very much
enjoyed the silliness there. I wanted to see what would happen if Chappie copied
his consciousness to all the drones, though. Because if he discovered
the secret of digitising consciousness, which was one of the sillier ideas to
be central to the film, why not make numerous copies?
