Dir: Neill Blomkamp
Year: 2015
Cast: Sharlto Copely, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Yolandi Visser, Ninja, Sigourney Weaver
Genre: Sci-Fi/Crime/Thriller/Action
Cert: 15A
Rating: ★★★
Believe me when I say I'm being quite generous with that 3 star rating. Neill Blomkamp brings us back into the rich, vibrant, mucky, shitty world of Johannesburg for his turd feature film... third, excuse me. Dev Patel returns to cinema after a short stint of renting hotel rooms to Judy Dench, in order to aid the South African police force with his army of artificially intelligent justice robots. They prove to be quite a big hit! Hugh Jackman, sporting a mullet that could cut through a fucking anvil; plays his work-nemesis who wants to release his own robot into the crime ridden streets. It's kitted out with advanced weaponry and it's ready to tear the anus off any criminal scum in it's path; it is of course... ED-209.... err wait, no it's the MOOSE... Look it up and you'll understand what I mean.
Sigourney Weaver, their boss, reckons that it's too much money to fund a beastly robit (read as Zoidberg) like that and it's not necessary as Dev's robot pals seem to be adequate enough to stop criminals. This leads Wacko Jacko on a mission to sabotage Dev's work in order to make his robot relevant. While all this is happening, Dev is working on turning a damaged robot of his into a sentient bot using new technology he has just invented. All sounds pretty good right? Well... that's the minor sub-plot of the film.
The main plot revolves around those two cock-stains out of Die Antwoord, Yolandi Visser and Ninja, as the twat likes to be known as. They're playing themselves as criminals who owe 20 million Rand (about 1.5 million Euro) to a notorious criminal lord. In order to do that without being taken down by Dev's robots, they decide to steal his now sentient robot, that they name Chappie, and use it to rob banks with them... oh and to raise it to be a "gangsta".
It's a daft premise anyway that possibly could have been executed well enough if it wasn't for those two smouldering bags of dog shit. Throughout the entire film they prance around their own abandoned factory which is decked out with TV's and power and what not, somehow not flooded and destroyed yet. They aren't just using their "real world" names either; they have all of their own music playing over the reasonably good score by Hans Zimmer; their own music by the way is a freakish love child of both gangster rap and rave music. It should have been burned at birth. On top of all those annoying factors along with them being allowed talk and try to act etc. they wear shirts and pants and have weapons and items with their own names and Die Antwoord logos all over them. It's infuriating!
The whole film plays like a 2 hour music video for these geebags; while having a really interesting but unoriginal story underlining it all. In regards to performances, those two are bollocks and don't count. Sigourney is making a lot of appearances lately as a big corporation boss-bitch; she's no different here than she is in The Cabin In The Woods or Paul, though it's nice to see herself and Blomkamp having an early teaming before the new Alien film.
Jackman as usual is great, he looks like a disgraced P.E. teacher in this film, but is in fact an unstable ex-soldier who reeeeally wants to let his Robocop fan-fiction sequel come to life. Dev Patel never really disappoints in anything and he doesn't start to here. The real star of the show is the reliable Sharlto Copley who plays Chappie. He's not only funny and insanely likable, but he's really convincing despite the fact he's not even showing a human face. He's more convincing than Die Antwoord anyway... I'll admit it probably didn't help that I hated them before watching but I can't imagine anyone who isn't a super-fan of theirs, NOT thinking their fucking garbage in this. Even the crew think they're cunts and some nearly got into fights with Ninja, who was acting like a dick and a big-shot on set the entire time.
Overall I do think it deserves a look, the subplot is engaging and the effects are absolutely brilliant. It's like watching Dawn of The Planet of The Apes again, in that you're looking at Caesar (or Chappie in this case) and you simply forget that it's actually special effects because it looks so good and real. The action set pieces are very well done too, those moments will appeal to you if you enjoyed District 9 or the criminally underrated Elysium. People have noticed that it's effectively a mix of Short Circuit, Robocop and Blomkamp's other work.
It's nothing new, it's nothing special, it's annoyingly predictable and it's his weakest film to date - but it's still worth a look. Just prepare to be infuriated by those two shitbags; unless you like them... in which case you're a gimp and won't follow the subplot.
Oh, it also annoys me that it sits at a 7.3 on IMDb while Elysium has a mere 6.7. If I was to do it by IMDb's terms, this would probably be at 6.2 and Elysium at a 7.6! All these fokken decimal points...
Sigourney Weaver, their boss, reckons that it's too much money to fund a beastly robit (read as Zoidberg) like that and it's not necessary as Dev's robot pals seem to be adequate enough to stop criminals. This leads Wacko Jacko on a mission to sabotage Dev's work in order to make his robot relevant. While all this is happening, Dev is working on turning a damaged robot of his into a sentient bot using new technology he has just invented. All sounds pretty good right? Well... that's the minor sub-plot of the film.
 |
| One of Dev's bais. |
The main plot revolves around those two cock-stains out of Die Antwoord, Yolandi Visser and Ninja, as the twat likes to be known as. They're playing themselves as criminals who owe 20 million Rand (about 1.5 million Euro) to a notorious criminal lord. In order to do that without being taken down by Dev's robots, they decide to steal his now sentient robot, that they name Chappie, and use it to rob banks with them... oh and to raise it to be a "gangsta".
 |
| Ninja probably demanding more vegan-friendly food. |
It's a daft premise anyway that possibly could have been executed well enough if it wasn't for those two smouldering bags of dog shit. Throughout the entire film they prance around their own abandoned factory which is decked out with TV's and power and what not, somehow not flooded and destroyed yet. They aren't just using their "real world" names either; they have all of their own music playing over the reasonably good score by Hans Zimmer; their own music by the way is a freakish love child of both gangster rap and rave music. It should have been burned at birth. On top of all those annoying factors along with them being allowed talk and try to act etc. they wear shirts and pants and have weapons and items with their own names and Die Antwoord logos all over them. It's infuriating!
The whole film plays like a 2 hour music video for these geebags; while having a really interesting but unoriginal story underlining it all. In regards to performances, those two are bollocks and don't count. Sigourney is making a lot of appearances lately as a big corporation boss-bitch; she's no different here than she is in The Cabin In The Woods or Paul, though it's nice to see herself and Blomkamp having an early teaming before the new Alien film.
 |
| This is his dodgeball canon from P.E. |
Jackman as usual is great, he looks like a disgraced P.E. teacher in this film, but is in fact an unstable ex-soldier who reeeeally wants to let his Robocop fan-fiction sequel come to life. Dev Patel never really disappoints in anything and he doesn't start to here. The real star of the show is the reliable Sharlto Copley who plays Chappie. He's not only funny and insanely likable, but he's really convincing despite the fact he's not even showing a human face. He's more convincing than Die Antwoord anyway... I'll admit it probably didn't help that I hated them before watching but I can't imagine anyone who isn't a super-fan of theirs, NOT thinking their fucking garbage in this. Even the crew think they're cunts and some nearly got into fights with Ninja, who was acting like a dick and a big-shot on set the entire time.
Overall I do think it deserves a look, the subplot is engaging and the effects are absolutely brilliant. It's like watching Dawn of The Planet of The Apes again, in that you're looking at Caesar (or Chappie in this case) and you simply forget that it's actually special effects because it looks so good and real. The action set pieces are very well done too, those moments will appeal to you if you enjoyed District 9 or the criminally underrated Elysium. People have noticed that it's effectively a mix of Short Circuit, Robocop and Blomkamp's other work.
 |
| Chappie talking to a wee stray dag. |
It's nothing new, it's nothing special, it's annoyingly predictable and it's his weakest film to date - but it's still worth a look. Just prepare to be infuriated by those two shitbags; unless you like them... in which case you're a gimp and won't follow the subplot.
Oh, it also annoys me that it sits at a 7.3 on IMDb while Elysium has a mere 6.7. If I was to do it by IMDb's terms, this would probably be at 6.2 and Elysium at a 7.6! All these fokken decimal points...
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