"That's nice."
Seemingly like Short Circuit via Mad Max, Blomkamp's third film starts off by hitting the reset button, stylistically following on from District 9 and bypassing the awkward bloat of Elysium. The very-near-future story is established quickly and moves along swiftly, with an effective energy to the big set-pieces and the more narrative-heavy beats. Chappie itself (beautifully mo-capped by Sharlto Copley) is endearing, with the compressed-lifespan/development conceit mostly effective if a bit jarring at times, but the human characters are written in very broad strokes indeed (especially with the less-than-convincing performances of Chappie's street-gang 'mom' and 'daddy'), in spite of nice comic touches by corporate boss Sigourney Weaver, Hugh Jackman relishing his (for a change) villainous role and Dev Patel as ever never less than committed and watchable. Hans Zimmer provides a tremendous score, which thankfully at times distracts from the extraordinary plotholes on offer (an entire human consciousness downloadable, via a laptop, stored on a memory stick?). Themes and allegories get hammer-heavy delivery (nature/nurture, family, man/machine), making Chappie overall feel slightly less organic and well-knit as District 9 but still much stronger than Elysium. The bonkers finale shows what last year's Robocop remake could have been, and the potential for Blomkamp's upcoming excursion into the Alien franchise remains a very appealing prospect indeed.
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