‘My friends call me Murphy. You call me… Robocop…’
A RoboCop sequel without either Paul Verhoeven behind the camera or Peter Weller in the suit seems like a doomed concept from the start. And so it is that RoboCop 3, this much derided threequel from The Monster Squad director Fred Dekker, currently sits on 9% on Rotten Tomatoes. While that is perhaps a little harsh, this remains a mostly pointless sequel…
I watched this film maybe a week ago (I’ve been delayed in writing this review due to illness) and I’m already struggling to recall the plot. It’s something about real estate development, and a gang of rebels, and RoboCop (now played by Robert Burke) fighting to avenge the death of his longtime partner, Anne Lewis (a returning Nancy Allen). It doesn’t really matter.
There are many issues with RoboCop 3. It’s tonally inconsistent. It looks flat. It’s boring. But perhaps the biggest issue is the fact that Dekker, known for making kid-friendly horror movies, dumbs down this entry in the RoboCop franchise so much that it’s closer in tone to the Saturday morning cartoon version of RoboCop than it is to Verhoeven’s original. Burke does a decent Weller impression and Rip Torn puts a decent shift in, but if the most memorable part of your movie is RoboCop flying about on a jetpack for ten seconds, then you are probably in trouble.
RoboCop 3 is exactly what you would imagine from the third entry in a franchise that has lost its star, its director and most of its original budget. Forgettable trash.
