Forgive me for I have sinned…I went and paid money to see CHAPPiE. And you know it was not all that bad overall.
The movie can best be described as being better in total than it’s separate parts would indicate. There’s plenty to not like about the movie throughout, but all in all I actually enjoyed it.
Of course, Spoilers!
There’s plenty of thuggery and lawlessness, and perhaps that was not necessary. Why the producers decided to make this film the way they did…I just don’t know. Perhaps there is some meaning to it, some sort of man vs machine version of moral equivalency. The movie seems to be saying that we humans are no better than machines, that we are all messed up too.
Okay, but not THAT messed up. Practically everyone in the film is simply out for themselves without regard for any other human being whatsoever. It certainly did NOT make Moby want to book a flight to South Africa next weekend.
I was thinking that the protagonist, CHAPPiE’s creator Deon (Dav Patel), was the only person who was not a complete a-hole, the only one who had good intentions and was a victim, like CHAPPiE. But then I thought about it. Deon commits several felonies in the film, starting with stealing CHAPPiE along with the one key that allows the entire police force to become compromised. He also steal munitions later on. He works for a weapons company. In short, he’s an asshole too.
Then there’s the whole technical questions about how large would someones consciousnesses be if you could write it as code. Small enough to fit on a thumb-drive?
Still, overall director Neill Blomkamp delivers us another dose of South African dystopia, much like District 9 in many ways, and he makes it work. Moby could have done with less gang culture and the bling, but overall I enjoyed the movie.
I can imagine watching this one a few times, and each time I imagine I’ll sit and think for a few minutes about what the movie was trying to say, or what I make of it’s message. It get’s you to thinking, and that’s a sign of a good movie.
But was all the dystopia really necessary Neill?
Moby Rating: 3 out of 5 Moby’s!
