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    RoboCop 2

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    I saw “Robocop 2” for the first time when I was in college. I knew it wasn’t as good as the first, but I still enjoyed it. I heard many people tell me that I was delusional, that it was a stinker. I stood my ground. I kept going back to key elements that made it (in my opinion) worth seeing. I’ve just finished rewatching it. Now, all I want to do now is travel back in time to slap my past self. This is a tired, unoriginal and lame sequel.

    After the unveiling of Robocop (Peter Weller) to the city of Detroit, Omni Consumer Products (OCP) has turned into a flat-out evil corporation. Their goal? Total domination of Detroit! While budget cuts and strikes cause most of the police to strike, Robocop is on the streets, fighting a war against a new addictive drug named Nuke. But OCP has another trick up its sleeve, plans to retire the cyborg and replace it with the vicious and easily controlled Robocop 2.

    Before I talk about the film, I feel like I need to describe to you the character of RoboCop 2. It’s a 12-foot tall, four-armed beast with clawed bird-like feet. It doesn’t have a face, can’t drive a vehicle or speak. One arm is a combination battering ram Gatling gun. Another has an arc welder for a hand. One of the remaining arms ends in a three-fingered claw and the other with a pincer. This is the proposed replacement for RoboCop? How is it supposed to make arrests? It can’t even walk through a doorway or drive a car! Don’t even get me started on the brain that controls this titanium beast. That plot point is a big bowl of nonsense. This “upgraded” model is a terrible idea both on the level of the people inside the “Robocop” universe and on the part of screenplay writers Frank Miller and Walon Green. RoboCop 2 isn’t a replacement for RoboCop, it’s a new ED-209, a big, dumb, cumbersome robot that’s vastly inferior to the original model. There is no better analogy to describe this film. “RoboCop 2” is to “RoboCop” what RoboCop 2 (the character) is to RoboCop.

    There are few shining moments. A mock trailer early on and a montage where we see some failed attempts to make a new RoboCop genereate big laughs. There are cool action bits with RoboCop’s partner Lewis (Nancy Allen) That’s it. The character development that Alex Murphy/RoboCop accumulated by the end of the first picture? Vanished. The humor? Not as good. The villains? Toilet worthy. Our main antagonists are a young drug dealer (played by Gabriel Damon whom many critics took offense to, but I think is the least of the film’s problems) and his older criminal mentor, Cain (Tom Noonan) Neither of these should be a threat to our mechanical hero, except that they are, because RoboCop sucks this time around. He’s completely incompetent, easily defeated and only saved because of massive plot holes in the script. That’s when he actually is in the movie. Large chunks of the film see RoboCop either offline or gone doing something mundane while the picture focuses on villains who aren’t compelling. The picture doesn’t even have the guts to be darkly comic or offensive. It just pussyfoots around trying to capitalize on your love of the first picture.

    Much of the picture treads over the same material as the first. Crime is out of control, RoboCop comes to the rescue but OCP stands in his way. There’s a bigger, dumber, nastier robot that needs to be taken out before Robo can expose the corruption. We’ve seen that before. If you don’t have any ideas, put off the picture that’s guaranteed money in the bank and do a bit more brainstorming in order to deliver a quality product. Let’s add director Irvin Kershner to the list of “people to blame for this crime”.

    There wasn’t anything about the initial film that screamed “what happens next?! ” so I say forget about this follow-up. “Robocop” is an action classic that’s so violent it becomes funny, and contains genuine intelligence both in it’s satire and themes. It’s filled with action, contains great villains, memorable lines and many iconic moments. Basically it’s everything that “RoboCop 2” is not. I’ve heard that “Robocop 3” is even worse than “2”. That’s got me shaking in my boots. I have it on my DVD shelf so I’m obligated to watch it sooner rather than later, if only so I can tell you if it does indeed smell of week-old yogurt sitting in the warm sun. I’ll give it a fair chance, but I’m not optimistic. (On DVD, March 11, 2016)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  27.5.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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