Chappie

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?