Chappie

Genre: SciFi, Action, Comedy
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, Gore, Mild Nudity

Almost like two films happening at once, Chappie is both an adorable and funny story about a robot with real AI learning like a human child and, and an action adventure about epic robot fights.

The adorable plot brings up some major concepts without even asking the 'big' questions, let alone showing any answers. The concept of souls, self and what it is to be human are brought up, but the characters are too busy to be concerned about this; neither should the viewer be, as the focus is on the individual characters and their journeys.

Watching a robot raised as the child of Die Antwoord, who play Johannesburg criminals, is far more hilarious than any description makes it sound.

With gangsters as his Mommy and Daddy, and the engineer behind the AI experiment as his Creator, we see Chappie learn to be cool from his adopted family and learn what morals and crimes are from his creator. Seeing him fake-wipe his nose and using slang and swearwords while refusing to kill or steal leads to some laugh out loud moments.

In between these funny and cute moments, there are sudden action sequences. It can be quite jarring, but the plots behind them are intertwined and the shock of the change in mood is the same for the characters. There is one particularly gory scene in particular; most viewers should be able to see that something extreme is about to happen, though. For a film with a scene where a robotic child plays with a doll, it does not pull it's punches on violence. The morality of a character and the viewer being made to like them does not lessen their chances of death. This is, however, a film with a scene where a robotic child plays with a doll; it ends happily.

Overall, Chappie is a fun film with an interesting mix of action and humour. It's probably not suitable for the faint of heart, but if you can deal with the gore the swearing just adds to the humour. Definitely one for the film collection.