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Well, having just watched Robocop and Robocop 2, what's next on our agenda? If you guessed Robocop 3, then, well, yeah. This movie is said to suck profoundly. By the standards of the Robocop series. I mean, first off, it's rated PG-13. That's a big red flag right there. Also our opening commercial and news report just aren't funny at all. This does lead into like a 7 year old girl doing her calculus homework on a cheesily "futuristic" laptop, which doesn't seem to have a color monitor, but does have a crazy fold-out keyboard. On the downside though, it looks like we're going to be following along with this kid and her family for a while. Oh yeah, and here's the evil OCP S.W.A.T. team rounding up people to evict from the city so they can do hat whole bulldozing thing. OK, so, that whole thing DID end up going through? Yeah, I guess the plan for Evil Kid to bail the government out went south when Max Headroom came and killed everyone. I do like this whole trend of each movie actually running with a dangling plot point from the previous movie, but that's... really the only positive thing I have to say here. We've got this inexcusable lack of budget going on here, and we're recycling some stuff from previous movies in those sad ways that suggest everyone involved has just plain stopped caring. We've got righteous bums, in the shmaltzy sense of the word, and they're hanging out with that little kid I just mentioned, after a lame eviction/riot scene ends with her parents, but not her, being dragged away... for some reason.
They go to a warehouse to get some guns and see an ED-209, which the little kid cheerily identifies... and then when it's getting ready to start shooting them, she just kinda runs up, opens a control panel on its ankle, connects it to her computer with a SCSI cable, and hacks it, apparently by opening its behavioral settings file and typing in "Loyal as a puppy." OK? This is how low we're setting the bar here. The good guys have a reprogrammed ED-209, and we're supposed to be happy for them. For that matter, there's good guys! It's supposed to just be evil corporate dudes, evil generic criminals, potentially crooked cops and researchers, and then Robocop and Partner as the only things approaching good guys. This feels more like I'm watching Robocop: The Series or something. That actually exists by the way.
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So our protagonist bums are fighting some cops off with their stolen weaponry... with nobody getting killed in the crossfire, and... yeah, this scene is just kinda wasting everyone's time here isn't it. So we cut over to some other cops, including Partner it seems, and they're fighting some Punks. OK, this giant pink mohawk? This is a redeeming element. I totally approve. Robocop abandons the possibility of interacting with the lame good guys I don't care about to come see this thing, and hey, a cop gets killed in the crossfire while he's on his way. A cop, as in one, from a single gun shot, which does not leave a ragged hole in his torso. I know I already harped on this, but a gore free Robocop is not a Robocop at all. Anyway, the punks' leader is apparently a total genius because he's shouting "Shoot him in the mouth!" over and and over, but his friend doesn't listen. So... they end up being... arrested and shoved into the backs of squad cars? In a Robocop movie! BLASPHEMY! You're supposed to kill all but one guy, toss him through a wall, and then just kinda wander off!
We then cut to OCP's board room where uh... Zed from Men in Black is getting chewed out via videophone by his Japanese overlords. Nobody in the room is a returning actor from the previous movie. That's a bad sign. And... here's a big muscular crossdresser with one of those oversized lollypops distracting me from explaining how cheesily exaggerated this Japanese country we're cutting to is. Oh, and speaking of not getting actors back, you know how back with the first movie I was talking about how Robocop apparently has the world's most recognizable lips? These aren't them. Yeah, we couldn't get Robocop to play Robocop for this movie. It's not like he got too big for it either. You know what Peter Weller's SECOND biggest role ever is behind Robocop? It's frelling Buckaroo Banzai. Now, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is a perfectly fine film, for slightly exotic definitions of "perfectly fine" but uh... yeah. So anyway, we're doing a whole bunch of recycling stock footage from the first movie here, but this is some pretty pathetic foreshadowing now. Robocop is getting ready to check out the church our cheery bumbs are hiding in, and Partner decides to tag along. Random other cop asks her "Hey, do you want your body armor?" "No, I'm off duty." So, she's about to get shot.
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First though we have to be stupid for a while, and recycle old plot points. Apparently, Robocop has his old 4 prime directives back, which we MIGHT have just hand waved with someone wanting to do some extra maintenance on him, but... yeah, evil OCP S.W.A.T. dudes come along and shoot Partner for stupid reasons so Robocop can dramatically carry her into a church where she dies... from injuries way less severe than in the first movie... because she actively avoided wearing a bullet proof vest when going to confront people who just stole a whole mess of guns. We don't even get any cheesy emotional drama out of this, we're just using it as an awkward plot device to get Robocop to team up with Penny and the bums. Did I mention how terrible this movie is? And not the awesome kind of terrible like it's supposed to be? Normally I'd just blame this on the writers just being random weirdos off the street who don't have even the faintest familiarity with their subject matter, but according to IMDB, the only people we have to blame here are the director and Frank Miller, who brought us the pile of baffling awesome that was the last movie, and had not yet kinda started going insane back when this was written to the best of my knowledge... and even then, he went from being really respectable to just this kinda self-parody, and we have absolutely no gun-toting hookers here. The director meanwhile is Fred Dekker, who brought us Monster Squad, which holds a place of honor on the list of great cheesy movies, and... kinda poked a friend of his to create the House movies, which I love to death. Also Night of the Creeps which isn't as good as a lot of people would have you believe. So... I could see Robocop suddenly fighting brain-slug zombies to rescue hookers from cannibal senators, but I can't see how this travesty here came to be.
OK, so here's some Japanese guy in a business suit who is apparently some kind of samurai/ninja and possibly also some kind of android because he had his lower jaw wanged weirdly to the side in that fight and then just kinda readjusted it in weird looking fashion. Meanwhile over here in boring land, the bums have gotten Robocop's scientist friend to come and help repair him because apparently in this movie, a bunch of cops shooting at him actually causes damage. So that 4th objective goes poof again, and we get this odd Explorers style mental trip with more stock footage from older, more watchable movies, and some really glaring examples of how we've recast this movie. And still more reminders of happier times. Also more Penny interacting with Robocop... who flashes back to looking through random records earlier and seeing how they were apparently killed while trying to escape from an internment camp. Um... what the frell movie? You're seriously telling me that the evil corporation here evicted a nice happy yuppie couple from their apartment, forced them into an internment camp, and then shot anyone trying to leave it. You TOTALLY FAIL at deriving sympathy from cheap deaths. Seriously, that's just frelling stupid. Oh, and speaking of plot contrivance, Dr. Friendly notices that the pile of weapons the bums stole fro some random warehouse arbitrarily included the special jetpack she designed for Robocop whose funding was cut... but was still apparently produced, and then sent to a warehouse somewhere, despite being totally useless for anything other than attaching to Robocop. The same applies to this special flame thrower arm they also have it seems. Dear gods! Please at least TRY movie! You don't have to be good. You don't have to be funny. You don't even have to be cheesy and baffling. You have to TRY though! Just... try to integrate plot points into something that resembles a story, please? It can be full of holes, it can be stupid, but don't just keep going "In this scene, Robocop gets this, because I want him to get something new now!" over and over.
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Plus seriously, this is a movie where nobody dies, or even gets hurt, unless them doing so gives Robocop more cause to be concerned for Penny's safety. I've seen more intensity from Disney cartoons. Not even just the good ones. Oh hey, Robocop just commandeered a pink Pimpmobile with fuzzy dice onthe mirror. See? That's something movie! It's not as funny as it should be, but you're making the effort. Just try doing some more like that. Oh, and now one of the bums turns out to be evil... which doesn't really go anywhere. Oh, and during a raid on theirbase, the lead bum is shot and dies in hilariously unconvincing fashion, again, to try making Penny more sympathetic. This is having the opposite effect on me though. I was on board with Penny at the start. We're going to be stupid enough to have a 9 year old hacker who knows calculus. That's ridiculous enough to be amusing. Now though I just can't stand her. Plus, again, compare with the little kid from the previous movie! What the hell! How did the same person write these!?! How!?!
Oh, here's some totally random animated commercial for an action figure. It's not actually amusing at all, but uh... congratulations for remembering that whole news clips and commercials thing you're supposed to be doing between scenes to interject some random humor. This is the first time you've done this since the movie started, and I think it's almost over. Please let it be almost over. Frelling nothing is frelling happening in this frelling movie. Oh hey, the police all quit so the evil evil company is forced to draft random 80s punks. That would be another brief glimmer of hope if not for being the premise of one of the Police Academy movies. Granted, it's the one with the most Bobcat Goldthwait in it, but it's still never OK to make me think about a Police Academy movie!
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Oh hey, it's that random ninja come to fight Robocop. Where the heck have you been all this time Random Ninja? I can't think of any good reason for this confrontation not to have happened forever ago. He slices off Robocop's hand, which somehow causes him to become low on power... which is particularly weird because that's the hand he can apparently pop on and off and replace with a flamethrower now. Meanwhile outside the quit-cops and bums are having a fight scene with the punk cops that I guess we just aren't looking at. Instead we cut back to ninja vs. robot, where Robocop grabs that flamethrower arm I just mentioned, and attaches it to his arm stump. Because I guess his arm wasn't cut off so much as knocked free of its attachment point. Then he unceremoniously launches a rocket at the ninja's head, because... it can do that too it seems. This leaves sparks and smoke coming from where his head was, so... I guess he was an android, yeah. We have androids? Clunky stop-motion Robots that can barely stand up over here, but androids over there? Sure whatever. That was pretty much the worst ratio of build up to payoff in any fight scene ever just so you know.
Afterwards, Robocop is all "Oh yeah, I can haz jetpack!" and goes to help his friends. There is no reason whatsoever I can think of hat he hasn't been using this jetpack since it was introduced. I mean, robot body. Not like he's going to get tired from the extra weight. Anyway, he goes to OCP headquarters to yell at people because, well, it's time to do that again, and suddenly, the ninja comes back. And then the ninja comes in. I guess we have three copies of this guy. At this point, Zed just kinda throws his arms up at how lame all this is and walks out of the movie. It really comes off like "Yeah sorry, I have too much dignity to be in this piece of crap, I'm going home." Oh, and just to make sure we don't get some sort of fight scene breaking out here or anything, Penny magically hacks the ninja twins from across the room to cut each others' heads off. So yeah, movie is now basically over. The Evil Japanese leader just kinda drives up to let us see his face well enough to go "Oh hey, is that a young Mako I see?" (Yes say the end credits.) And... yeah that's it, we just kinda stop with our non-climax and assume our non-plot all works out. I'm not saying the movie ends abruptly. I mean, they tie everything up all happy ending like, it's just that it's kinda going "Yeah whatever, we're done, sorry you had to watch this."
So yeah. That movie totally blew. I hope it was at least entertaining to read my disgust, because I took no enjoyment of any sort from sitting through it.
