I’m going to make this a short one. I don’t know if I understand the message in Chappie, but even if I do, I’m not sure that I agree with it. It’s hard to say because the movie is just a mess of mangled, mixed-up morality. It often seems at odds with itself and leaves you scratching your head at its ambiguousness. For example (very slight spoiler), our “hero” (Dev Patel) is told he can’t bring home the leftover robot to experiment on. (Which, let’s face it, would seem a little creepy to most employers. “Sooo….why do you want it, again?”) So he just takes it. That’s right—the hero is an office thief. And we’re not just talking about a box of pens or a stapler or some paper clips, here; this is (I assume) a multi-million dollar piece of equipment. And then (another slight spoiler), after explaining how Chappie’s mind is just like that of a child’s, what does he do? If you guessed “leaves the robot-child with a trio of dirtbag thieves/drug dealers who just threatened to kill him, knowing that they’re going to use Chappie to commit crimes,” you are correct!! Apparently, although creating artificial intelligence is among his skills, babysitting and good judgement are not. Normally, I don’t like to dole out too many spoilers, but I had to do it in this case, just so you could see how ridiculous some aspects of the plot are here. And that’s just scratching the surface. I could make a list. Chappie is kinda crappy.

That said, the robot is well done, and in a lot of ways is the most believable and seems to be the most human of all the characters. So if you insist on watching it, watch it for that, I guess. I wasn’t a big fan of Blomkamp’s going into this, and this just reinforced that.  IMDB gives it a confusing (to me, anyway) 7.0. I give it a 4.5, with the .5 added for the cuteness of Chappie. (running time 2:00)