You can convince anyone any piece of shit is good now, just look at Cybertrucks and naziism.

Now listen, I didn’t finish college, and I’d never claim to be writing something academic, but there used to be some kind of consensus about good vs bad. And as flawed as the system was, it was understood: Beastie Boys, Alien, and First season of Lost: Good, and similar things, Limp Bizkit, Alien 3, and last season of Lost: Bad. Sure a lot of questionable elements went into that consensus (propped up marketing, culturally ingrained biases, snobbery). But now because we’ve fully lived through at least a generation of click-economy articles and YouTube essays about how something is “good, actually” we’ve altered our brains to undo the rules of connoisseurship.

We could get into a million reasons why that is. I’m building a case to blame everything wrong with America on not adequately replacing Joan Rivers, Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert, but that’s not what I’m after right now.

I’m here to revel in the lack of snooty gatekeepers and snide shit talkers. Generally, I try to be judicious in my hot takes and don’t submit them to the internet unless I can defend them in court, but there are no rules anymore. If people are telling each other dogshit is a damn sundae, I’m gonna get my case heard too: The 2015 Neill Blomkamp film Chappie is a masterpiece.

Quick refresher for anyone who clicked this at random or misread the title or something. Chappie is the third film from South African director Neill Blomkamp, after his breakthrough hit District 9 and the sophomore semi-slump Elysium. Chappie is about a police robot whose brain is reset to blank baby-mode, and is then raised by Ninja and Yolandi Visser of the rap duo Die Andwoord, presumably playing themselves. They use their real (stage) names at least, but they don’t rap or talk about rapping. They do have guns and do heists though. In one scene Yolandi is wearing a Chappie T-shirt like she already knows that she’s in the movie Chappie. If you complain about things like this, you’ve been exposed as a virgin who doesn’t understand art.

The elevator pitch is Robocop meets Kids Say the Darndest Things, also the kids are saying the darn things because they were raised by Ninja and Yolandi of South African rap duo Die Antwoord.

If you heard that and said, “Why would I watch this? I could be doing important real things like the New York Times crossword or thinking about a scientist” this article is for you.

You probably didn’t give Chappie a second thought if you even gave it a first one. It may be best known for a tweet.

It’s a punchline, a box office flop, a 32% Rotten Tomato score, and basically responsible for Neill Blomkamp not making any movies you’ve heard of for the last 10 years. But why? How bad could it be? Common complaints are that the premise is stupid, OK sure, tell that to perfect movie Robocop.

A lot of reviews I looked up mention numerous plot holes. Gang, looking for plot holes is a trap and the reward for finding them is that you are a huge nerd. “Why did they install A.I. in a police robot?” Because if they didn’t we wouldn’t have Chappie. “Why was Hugh Jackman able to pull a gun on Dev Patel at work and not be punished?” Because it’s funny. “Why doesn’t Chappie get smarter?” Because that would not be funny.

You could debate how much the movie realizes it’s funny, and everyone’s answer would probably end up in a different spot on the spectrum, but I don’t think you can make a movie about a gangsta robot with a baby’s brain who brutally disfigures Hugh Jackman and not have some sense of humor. Was Chappie getting “the right kind of laughs”? When I first watched it in theaters, I probably cared, but now? I dunno, man. When Chappie throws a rubber chicken at a guy and then carjacks him, I’m just laughin’.

Maybe people think the movie had a stupid message. I’m not sure what the message is, but I don’t think a movie needs to have a good message, or a message at all to be good. I don’t know anything about Neill Blomkamp besides what his movies have told me, and for the most part his simple and blunt messages have been: greed is bad, segregation is bad, and “I like weird little guys”. Taken on that level, sure I’m all in, Neill. This ain’t Mike Leigh, it’s not even Paul Verhoeven, it’s more like They Live if you bonked John Carpenter on the head with a coconut. 

Knowing that, what’s not to love here? Literally every second Chappie is on screen, it’s a perfect movie. He’s either attacking someone with a shuriken or saying something like, “I’m the rudest gangsta in Joburg, fuck mother” (Chappie, despite all his programming, adorably can’t get the term “mother fucker” in the right order).

Trying to figure out a movie’s message can say more about what you wanted than what it is. Some movies just need the right context and sometimes it doesn’t hurt to deprogram what you bring to it. It’s not for you, necessarily, but it can be yours if you just take it at face value: This robot swears and steals cars.

It does a lot of cool stuff and I’m here to champion that. It looks great, for one. The world is fully realized and striking, costumes and sets reflect its characters. Plus the action looks cool. Sometimes I think Neill Blomkamp is a director in the wrong time. He’d have been a natural in the 80s Arnold action era. The guns look cool, we see a lot of them, there’s a huge mech drone thing, the fight scenes are slightly too long in the good way. It’s all clearly made by someone who has an appreciation for cool looking stuff and just wants to see that cool stuff on screen.

Sure, Blomkamp thought it was a good idea to cast non-actors in lead roles, and you can look at that as a stupid move, but those are the exact kind of big swings I want more of. It’s definitely not the worst case of hiring a musician as a lead, and it certainly doesn’t feel like a Hollywood synergy promotional choice either. This isn’t hiring Justin Timberlake because marketing says girls will see your movie if you do. This was an honest to god fan choice and I love that. You can feel Blomkamp’s enthusiasm for what he’s doing.

Apparently our minds can’t distinguish between loving something and loving something ironically, it’s all the same chemicals. As dangerous as that is to my own perception of reality, it is true that someone told me they read that. And I believed it! Perhaps I’m through the irony looking glass or perhaps I’m seeing clearly. My brain will never know the diff, but Chappie is an earnest movie, presented bluntly, executed expertly. You can call it dumb or a bad idea to begin with, but I’ll take a dumbass movie that believes in itself over one that safely does everything “right” 10 out of 10 times.

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