This Might Be The Best Robot Movie Since Wall-E
Writer-director Neill Blomkamp exploded onto the film scene with his sci-fi take on xenophobia, District 9. While that film was almost universally praised, his sophomore effort, the Matt Damon vehicle Elysium, failed to garner the same reaction. Elysium wasn't a bad movie — it just failed to meet the sky-high expectations Blomkamp created with District 9.
Now we're getting our first taste of the director's latest offering, Chappie, a much lighter-seeming affair about an adorable robot whose artificial intelligence is programmed to learn the same way humans do. Chappie stars Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, and Blomkamp favorite Sharlto Copley as the voice of the eponymous robot.
Chappie looks as though it's borrowing heavily from the robot-human dynamics that made Short Circuit such an endearing classic, and that's fine by me; District 9 and Elysium spent much of their runtimes exploring squalor and poverty, so a new, more upbeat perspective on robotics is definitely welcome, even if the trailer can be accused of looking like District 9-lite.
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