An English cleric by the name of Charles Caleb Colton had the famous quote of “Imitation is the sincerest [form] of flattery.” It’s a quote that the likes of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer try to embody but fail miserably with their unremarkable movie spoofs that include Date Movie, Meet the Spartans, and The Starving Games, the last of which debuted on only ten screens in the U.S. last November. Yet they continue to have gainful employment because people worldwide are foolish with their disposable income when it comes to movie selections.
In a Valentine’s Day/Presidents’ Day weekend that includes three ‘80s remakes entering theaters – with only one of the three being a strong update to a thirty-year-old movie – there is another option for those who are hesitant about seeing a Robocop remake in theaters.
And I don’t mean putting the 1987 original in the Blu-ray player and enjoying it all over again.
For those who remember Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind you’ll recall the numerous sweded videos made for films like Ghostbusters and Rush Hour 2. Take that concept and crowdsource it for a singular film. That film is Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop. By all accounts RoboCop (2014) is a mediocre attempt to cash-in on a popular hard-R film that became a watered down franchise by the time the second sequel came around. To top it all off, it even became multiple TV projects, both live-action and animated. With Our RoboCop Remake fandom is put to the test as 50 filmmakers unite to make the best Valentine’s gift for a generation that was weaned on watching Arnold Schwarzenegger eat Green Berets for breakfast, learned that Rocky Balboa was the one who ended the Cold War in Rocky IV, and saw Tom Cruise dance in his underwear.
The reason for its development was that the RoboCop fan community was upset with the inferior product that was about to be unleashed by Sony Pictures. So David Seger, the man credited as the organizer of this fanboyitious (fanboy + ambitious) project, got the help from several dozen filmmakers and FX teams to recreate the 1987 movie scene by scene. Much like the robot cop itself, there’s no connective tissue to be found here. The filmmakers just pay attention to the original narrative and include new lines of dialogue and actions in each successive scene. The humor is juvenile in nature, relying on sex and flatulence jokes, but it’s the devil may care attitude that makes it enjoyable. Well, for this reviewer at least.
As someone who can navigate between Family Guy and Frasier re-runs for laughs, I guess you could say my gamut for humor falls somewhere in between lowbrow and highbrow. Our RoboCop Remake is far from being labeled as high art, but its creativity lifts it beyond Internet obscurity to be something that should be revisited in a larger setting, like at an Alamo Drafthouse.
Incorporating portions of the original picture to help set up the next scene, this remake is a bunch of nonsense with jokes being derived out of the situation as well as the method of telling the story. It’s all to pay homage to Verhoeven’s satirical masterwork, which would serve as the first of an unconnected trilogy (also including Total Recall and Starship Troopers) of sci-fi/action flicks that mock the likes of war propaganda, consumerism, and technology.
Much like the patchwork created with The ABCs of Death, where genre directors were given five grand each to make 26 different short films on the subject of death (each letter of the alphabet represented a different method of demise), I’m guessing the amateur filmmakers made their scenes for far less, except maybe scene 27 from Fatal Farm.
Running a little less than 110 minutes, the extended joke of Our RoboCop Remake works best who have an appreciation for the original and can find the humor of it all. It’s an odd movie to say the least. It’s like I was watching The Kentucky Fried Movie for the first time only instead of different sketches I was watching a full-length version of a movie as interpreted by a bunch of goofballs.
That’s not to say that everything about Our RoboCop Remake works. It’s all over the place in terms of quality and comedy, but you just sort of go with it watching how these different filmmakers go about interpreting Robocop with their own visual flair. The character of Robocop alternates throughout. Sometimes he’s Caucasian; other times he’s black or Asian. His suit also varies. Some suits look movie-legit worthy. In other scenes he’s wearing tinfoil. It’s all about the ingenuity and trying to keep it steady, if not entertaining throughout.
The tone is set from the very beginning as the MediaBreak news team report the day’s news while slurping down spaghetti (as the slogan goes, “This is MediaBreak at dinnertime. We eat dinner, while you eat dinner.”). Murphy’s demise by Boddicker’s gang is told through interpretive dance and is preceded by a cast of babies acting out the scene. The movie Drive is acknowledged when RoboCop goes out on a “Nightcall.” Animated is used at various times and the quality is either cheap and easy or surprisingly good. To ensure that what your watching is a spoof, a lawyer working on behalf of Sony Pictures and MGM interrupts the film and tells the audience to go see the RoboCop opening on February 12th, and also acknowledges that they should buy their tickets through Fandango and buy the movie tie-in sandwich sub from Subway.
If it sounds like Our RoboCop Remake goes all kitchen sink on the audience, well you are correct. Whether it’s musical numbers, 8-bit animation, or seeing RoboCop reminisce about his time on the force as he writes a letter to his Robo-parents, David Seger’s crowdsource project is a tongue-in-cheek affair that respects the original film while also cutting it to shreds. Even though it’s free online, it’s totally worth buying for a dollar.
Director: David Seger, Various
Writer: Various; based on Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner’s 1987 screenplay
To view the film, please visit ourrobocopremake.com
