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| Directed by Neill Blomkamp Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell |
What Blomkamp did next was piss away most of that good will on Elysium, an awkward hard-left polemic on American immigration policy and wealth disparity dressed up as allegorical sci-fi that highlights his biggest problem as a film maker. Even if he's one of the better directors working today, at least from a technical standpoint, as a writer Neill Blomkamp has yet to grasp that subtlety does not involve sledgehammers.
(I mean, just look at that poster! It's hilariously on-the-nose, and I doubt that was intentional.)
Neill Blomkamp is like a hybrid of Andrew Niccol and the Wachowskis, but if you sucked out any and all skill with words. He has Niccol's detailed world building and desire to use the fantastic as a lense to explore real-world issues, and the Wachowskis' big out there sci-fi concepts realized through millions of dollars in CGI. But he can never make the two mix in a satisfying way, and his constant bludgeoning of the audience with heavy-handed political points keeps his films from working either as serious drama or as crowd pleasing spectacle. Which is a shame since he really knows how to tell a story with pictures, he just doesn't know how to come up with a story to tell...
Two Hours Later
...until now. I'm pretty sure I just watched a hard-R Pixar movie, but I mean that in the best possible way. I can't believe I'm saying this, but CHAPPiE is actually pretty good. It's certainly Neill Blomkamp's best film, and that's because he's dropped almost any pretense. Despite being set in a near-future Johannesburg where the police force has been almost entirely replaced with emotionless robots to control high crime rates, there's no sociopolitical messages to monger this time. That lets Blomkamp focus on doing what he's always done best, wringing pathos out of each and every expertly arranged shot.
It's near-future Johannesburg, the police use robots called 'scouts' as field agents, and our focus is on Dave Patel as Deon Wilson, a programmer for Tetravaal, the company responsible for manufacturing the scouts. He's managed to make true artificial intelligence, but Sigourney Weaver's CEO won't let him test it on a company dime, so he steals a damaged scout to use as a test subject. Unfortunately, he's kidnapped by South African gangsta' rap act Die Antwoord playing gangsters Ninja and Yolandi to pay off a debt, and is forced to hand over the robot to them. Once they find out he's the scout's creator, they force him to upload the AI into it, dubbing him Chappie and using him for their heists.
CHAPPiE's central conceit seems to be positing Deon and the gang as two different kinds of adoptive parents. Chappie is a child, and incredibly eager to please, and he's torn between Deon teaching him to embrace creativity, and the forbidden fruit allure of Die Antwoord's dangerous gangsta' antics. As played by Sharlto Copley via some top notch motion capture, Chappie also questions why Deon, who he calls his 'maker' put him in a body with a damaged battery that's doomed to run out of power in a few days, at one point asking him "Why did you make me so I could die?" Blomkamp is just as unsubtle as ever, but this time it comes off as endearing instead of pretentious since he's just trying to make you feel emotions for Chappie, who is essentially Baymax mixed with ET in terms of onscreen presence.
(Incidentally, any kids that sneak into the theater are going to fall in love with this movie.)
If CHAPPiE has one very serious problem, it's that Blomkamp may be trying to do too many things at once. You could work an entire movie out of Ninja and Yolandi trying to raise the robot, or Deon's blossoming god complex, or an entirely different big sci-fi idea that comes up at the very end which probably should have been saved for a sequel or a different film, but that's mostly nitpicking since the parts that work, Chappie's slow discovery of his own humanity, work like gangbusters.
CHAPPiE is actually pretty awesome. It will be better a year from now once some random kid puts a bunch of money shots set to an inspirational pop ballad on YouTube, but for now it's a pleasant surprise and worth seeing, but I'd wait for DVD instead of seeing it in a theater.
Two Hours Later
...until now. I'm pretty sure I just watched a hard-R Pixar movie, but I mean that in the best possible way. I can't believe I'm saying this, but CHAPPiE is actually pretty good. It's certainly Neill Blomkamp's best film, and that's because he's dropped almost any pretense. Despite being set in a near-future Johannesburg where the police force has been almost entirely replaced with emotionless robots to control high crime rates, there's no sociopolitical messages to monger this time. That lets Blomkamp focus on doing what he's always done best, wringing pathos out of each and every expertly arranged shot.
It's near-future Johannesburg, the police use robots called 'scouts' as field agents, and our focus is on Dave Patel as Deon Wilson, a programmer for Tetravaal, the company responsible for manufacturing the scouts. He's managed to make true artificial intelligence, but Sigourney Weaver's CEO won't let him test it on a company dime, so he steals a damaged scout to use as a test subject. Unfortunately, he's kidnapped by South African gangsta' rap act Die Antwoord playing gangsters Ninja and Yolandi to pay off a debt, and is forced to hand over the robot to them. Once they find out he's the scout's creator, they force him to upload the AI into it, dubbing him Chappie and using him for their heists.
CHAPPiE's central conceit seems to be positing Deon and the gang as two different kinds of adoptive parents. Chappie is a child, and incredibly eager to please, and he's torn between Deon teaching him to embrace creativity, and the forbidden fruit allure of Die Antwoord's dangerous gangsta' antics. As played by Sharlto Copley via some top notch motion capture, Chappie also questions why Deon, who he calls his 'maker' put him in a body with a damaged battery that's doomed to run out of power in a few days, at one point asking him "Why did you make me so I could die?" Blomkamp is just as unsubtle as ever, but this time it comes off as endearing instead of pretentious since he's just trying to make you feel emotions for Chappie, who is essentially Baymax mixed with ET in terms of onscreen presence.
(Incidentally, any kids that sneak into the theater are going to fall in love with this movie.)
If CHAPPiE has one very serious problem, it's that Blomkamp may be trying to do too many things at once. You could work an entire movie out of Ninja and Yolandi trying to raise the robot, or Deon's blossoming god complex, or an entirely different big sci-fi idea that comes up at the very end which probably should have been saved for a sequel or a different film, but that's mostly nitpicking since the parts that work, Chappie's slow discovery of his own humanity, work like gangbusters.
CHAPPiE is actually pretty awesome. It will be better a year from now once some random kid puts a bunch of money shots set to an inspirational pop ballad on YouTube, but for now it's a pleasant surprise and worth seeing, but I'd wait for DVD instead of seeing it in a theater.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
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