ROBOCOP 3 RoboCop in a pimpmobile! Beware! Until tonight, I hadn't seen this one since it was a new release. I remember renting that one in spite of the near-universal tide of disdain flung at it, and getting through the movie mostly thinking it wasn't bad after all. However, eight or so years in which to not remember much of it and only hear from others who didn't like it is a long time, and I was rather apprehensive about seeing this one again. Nevertheless, I figured I pretty much had to if I'm going to review RoboCop: Prime Directives (coming soon!). The series of RoboCop projects - before R:PD, there were three movies and a TV series - is interesting in that most fans seem to have one, but only one, of the followups to the original that they liked. RoboCop 2 was even more violent and cynical than the original, but lacked its finesse and threw out most of its good ideas about halfway through. Nevertheless, for all its flaws, it's my favorite of the followups. RoboCop 3, as I'll get into here, tells a mostly better story and (to a lot of people) corrected on many of part 2's excesses, but is rather watered-down for a younger audience. Then, there was the RoboCop TV series, which saw him become a more or less conventional superhero, alas with the not-uncommon prejudice that superhero stories are entertainment for children and nothing more - again, it's got its fans, most of whom didn't like either of the movie sequels. I'm afraid the RoboCop 3 didn't win me over this time, though I think it really is better than you may have heard. The movie opens well with an ad for Delta City, the "city of the future" in development by Omni Consumer Products. The ad plays on the notion that people will do anything you want them to if you convince them that it's for the good of the children. And that's all the satire you'll see in this movie for a while. I don't know how long it is after the events of RoboCop 2, but OCP is in trouble. Even though for once, striking isn't on the cops' minds, the company has recently been taken over by a Japanese corporation, and if they don't manage to chase out the citizens of Old Detroit to make room for Delta City construction within a few days, the banks will recall their loans and the company will be dead in the water. So, OCP's new CEO (Rip Torn, who appears to specialize in playing semi-competent suits) decides to send in "rehabilitators", hired mercenaries (complete with swastika-like emblems, that's subtlety for ya) under the command of the reprehensible McDaggett (English-accented - of course! - John Castle). So, for the first time, RoboCop finds that he's got priorities bigger than the commands that OCP is handing down to him, which results in him taking sides in the squatters-vs.-The-Man conflict. Peter Weller, having decided that two shoots of having to spend sixteen hours a day inside a tin can were enough, bowed out and RoboCop 3 has Robert John Burke filling his Robo-shoes. All things considered, he does a fine jog, although I don't think anybody'll ever get the voice just right. (exception: one character in R:PD; it'd be a bit of a spoiler for me to say who it is, but to be fair, his voice is more obviously electronically manipulated than the other actors' voices) Nancy Allen returns as Louis, though she's given even less to do here than she was in RoboCop 2. Also returning are Robert DoQui as the crusty police captain and Felton Perry as the corporate toadie, the Smithers to Torn's Burns. RoboCop 3 tells a more coherent story than the first sequel, at least in that its ideas are mostly carried through to their conclusions. Unfortunately, much of that story is in the service of the occasional sop to moralizing about Big Corporations. Foreshadowings are ham-fisted, even character's names are cheesy as hell (uh, Dr. Lazarus?). Other clichés bog thing down, like the computer-genius kid, and there's even some gratuitous morphing, as sure a sign that this movie was made in the early 90's as any. Some criminals bring up the not-unreasonable point that RoboCop's vulnerable spot must be his mouth, the only part of flesh that's routinely visible. Natch, nothing is done with this, though I don't think anybody was thinking this in any of RoboCop's other incarnations either. This time RoboCop is, if anything, less vulnerable, since he now comes with arm attachments (machine gun, flame-thrower, you name it) which he can snap on and off at will (fat lot of good it does him, with him getting his fingers chopped off by katanas). He also gets a jetpack, that also snaps on and off, hmm, sounds like an action figure, wink wink, nudge nudge. At any rate, the climactic showdowns between RoboCop and a couple of robot samurai are both real letdowns; not for one moment do these samurai seem like they'd last half a second against RoboCop, but for some reason, RoboCop spends half of his fights against them sitting down. Many of the characters are annoying, too. Torn's CEO is only a semi-competent clown, pretty much the same role he played on The Larry Sanders Show, except he's got nobody to play against. Remy Ryan plays a precocious little girl who, as is the case with so, so many precocious kids in the movies, is more collected and clear-thinking than any of the adults around her (though, also not unexpected, she pouts her way through the whole damn movie), and of course can reprogram killer robots within seconds. (Poor ED-209, is he allowed no dignity?) And Nancy Allen makes her exit about a third of the way through, definitely disappointing me when I first saw this (one picture of RoboCop and her - and she looked pretty hot - was all I got to see of this much-anticipated movie while it languished on the shelf for 2 years while the mess of Orion's finances was worked out). RoboCop 3 is not without a sense of humor ("You got a RoboCop, huh? You got an alien cop? You got a ghost cop? You got a vampire cop?"), but for the most part the satire is pushed WAY back. I think a cartoon for "Johnny Rehab" (one of the funniest damn things I've seen in years) is the only advertisement in the film that we got to see. Otherwise, the satire is limited to...well, a pair of layoff-related suicides about halfway through. Yeah, they were funny, but this movie needed so much more stuff like this. And the crook trying to hold up a diner frequented by cops doesn't count; it's been done way too many times before. The blue subtitles (yes, BLUE subtitles) are a pain in the ass. And while almost all of the movie looks every bit as good as its predecessors did, the climax (which features RoboCop flying around on a jetpack) is pretty shoddy work. Worse yet, a number of the details don't ring true. I mean...take one scene where a character uses a hammer to smash something. It's some sort of sci-fi, high-tech hammer, made of clear blue plastic. C'mon, people - think of how far hammer technology has(n't) advanced in the last few centuries. Now tell me, does anybody really think it'll make any leaps and bounds in the next few decades? Additionally, a street gang called the "Splatterpunks" factors into the plot, and like all street gangs in every pandering escapist action flick, these people are all white kids with spiked green hair. I mean, I understand that the makers of this movie want nothing less than to wade into racially charged waters, but still, white kids with spiked green hair? Complain as I might about all that's wrong about this movie - and there is a LOT wrong with this movie - you could do worse than RoboCop 3. Where else are you going to see RoboCop commandeer a pink pimpmobile? Basil Poledouris, who scored the original film, returns for this one and delivers a solid score that, while obviously derivative of his original, works well. Law & Order grad Jill Hennessey plays the cheesily named Dr. Lazarus, and it's always good to see her. And RoboCop himself hasn't yet been "niced" up to the point where he's afraid to kill anybody (the TV series had a total body count of, I believe, ZERO); he might not be shooting anybody in the nuts, but he's still the "brute force or no force" RoboCop we all know and love. Directed by Fred "Night Of The Creeps" Dekker, who has since been blamed by some for the "kid-friendly" direction of this one. I'm not sure whether to believe that, but one thing's for sure: this isn't half the film RoboCop is. 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