Neill Blomkamp’s latest film “Chappie” tries to do too much, and even its artificial intelligence can’t save it.
Following Blomkamp’s huge sci-fi success in “District 9” (2009) and the less successful “Elysium” (2013), “Chappie” seeks to explore the social effects of artificial intelligence, using the streets of Johannesburg to set a futuristic crime state, which demands the need for robot police order.
Dev Patel (“Slumdog Millionaire”) plays a young, ambitious employee who breaks the code for artificial intelligence and seeks to test it in one of the police robots. His coworker, Hugh Jackman (“X-Men”, “The Prestige”), has his own, better robot design, and seeks to oust Patel’s A.I. project, Chappie, to test his own toy.
Sampling from previous sci-fi films like “Robocop” (1987, 2014) and “Artificial Intelligence” (2001), the movie adds a slight twist to its genre: Chappie begins as a child.
It’s worth stating my initial expectations for the movie. Seeing Jackman, I knew it would have aspects of a typical action movie, and Patel especially got me excited because I loved him in “Slumdog Millionaire”. I thought, “This might be an okay sci-fi/action with a heart.”
For most of the film, I was unfortunately more touched watching the upbringing of Chappie than the rest of the film. Almost immediately after the opening montage, the movie begins to drift from its perceived intention of exploring the effects police robots have on a human population.
As Manohla Dargis noted in a review in The New York Times, “Given the big studio way, it’s no surprise that the robots… have been created with more attention to detail than the story.” I agree that Chappie, toeing between genres, can’t decide how to cater to its audience.
The film’s decision to cast Yo-Landi Visser and Ninja, part of the South African rap-rave group “Die Antwoord,” as themselves in the movie particularly baffles me. While their music adds to a believable futuristic and crime-filled Johannesburg, the film’s casting the band as actors playing themselves feels like an inside joke that doesn’t land.
There are ambitious, philosophical intentions in the movie, but it fails to develop any thesis. It is intriguing to watch humans raise a robot as if it were a child, but I found myself wanting more from the film about a conscious robot’s effect on the public, rather than watching Patel and Jackman’s characters fight over who has a better robot.
The movie accentuates the shallowness and greed of its human characters more than it explores Chappie. While it notes Chappie’s desire to become immortal, the film never questions the implications of that desire. A serious ending arrives without a developed middle, leading the viewer into thinking that they missed something mid-way.
“Chappie” presents some interesting oddities. I enjoyed Patel’s passion for raising the robot, but neither his energy nor Ninja and Yolandi’s quirkiness save the film from ambiguous intent, leaving behind an inevitably lost, frustrated viewer.