When It comes to AI movies, many directors and filmmakers have tried their hands on it. from Hal-9000 from 2001:A Space Odyssey to Ultron from the Avengers sequel last year. Many of those feel to deliver and yet the genre is alive and this is visible with Chappie from last year.
From The Director Neil Blomkamp comes Chappie starring Dev Patel, Ninja, Hugh Jackman and Siguorney Weaver. The movie is about a robot having Artificial Intelligence who is named “Chappie” by a female member of a gangster squad. Chappie is not a normal robot, he has consciousness and acts just like a normal child would. He learns from the scratch about what the world is like and what is a promise.
What the movie lacked was good characters, except Chappie- the viewer cannot compare with other characters and thus the viewer do not care about them, add superficial acting to that and you get a disaster waiting to happen. The disaster is saved by always whining irritating protagonist and his ideas. The way Chappie learn and the speed of it is quite debatable, but in the end we need to remember it is a movie.
The director’s first movie was one of the most ambitious movie i have seen-District 9, (Commenting on apartheid by using an alien race was mindbogglingly brilliant) but Chappie fails to deliver to that extent. While the Idea seems original the idea (in the AI genre) is not well executed, at the end Chappie is a failed opportunity to make something good out of old movie ideas.
PS: The Brand advertisement of Die Antwood Band by making them act in the movie was too much to handle, there is a reason they play for band and are not actors-they CANNOT act. There was also no particular reason why we were being forced to know that we are in South Africa-We get it already. This makes me wonder, How much money did Neil Blomkamp took from South Africa Tourism.
This movie can only get 7/10 and that too for its hilarious jokes.
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