Joining the cast of 'Chappie'? Hugh Jackman needed to mullet over

HUGH Jackman - actor, dancer, singer, Wolverine - is cinema's most versatile performer.

In "Chappie" he's been given the greatest challenge of his career: a mullet.

The sight of Jackman in the ghastly thing raises a question, one that is posed later in the movie by a machine granted the gift of independent consciousness:

"Why do humans do this?"

He's not referring to the mullet specifically, but to the broad range of awful human behavior displayed so relentlessly (and loudly) by "District 9" director Neill Blomkamp in this sci-fi/cyber-punk/hip-hop mash-up, meant to function as an inquiry into the ethics of artificial intelligence.

It's set in near-future Johannesburg, where a tech titan (Sigourney Weaver) has deployed a fleet of robot cops to pacify the mean streets, plagued by roving gangs of "Mad Max"-ish lunatic gangs.

Her best engineer, Deon (Dev Patel), has come up with a program to bestow independent intelligence to the robots, to the dismay of rival engineer Vincent Moore (Jackman), who merely wants to terrorize the public with a bigger, meaner machine called the Moose.

Just as Deon completes his prototype, he and the machine are kidnapped by colorfully stupid gangsters, who name the machine Chappie (because he's a happy chappie) and train him to be "robot gangsta numba one."

Blomkamp borrows heavily from "Robocop," and even steals the heart-light from "E.T.," but he does bring his own new wrinkle here: His Chappie starts as a blank slate, effectively a child, who imprints on the influences around him.

On one hand you have Deon, who teaches Chappie to paint and read and to be a nice guy. On the other hand you have the gangsters, who festoon him with gold chains, teach him to curse and shoot guns and steal and rob in the violent pursuit of selfishness.

Here we have the dynamic that has so transfixed behavioral scientists: Nurture versus Nitwit.

And I think that's the intention of Blomkamp - he pitches the whole thing as a demented comedy. To play the thugs, he's hired South African "rave rap" performers Die Antwoord, Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser, candy-colored punks striking what appear to be facetious gangster rap poses. They're children themselves (living in an old factory that's half hideout, half playhouse), whose stuck-in-adolescence slang feels like an homage to "A Clockwork Orange."

"Chappie," though, is not in that class. It's a clanging, poorly plotted and nonsensical movie. Blomkamp's near-future world is unconvincing, his title character off-putting (comparisons to Jar Jar Binks have been made). Blomkamp's ambitious ideas bang around like rocks in a tumbling dryer, and you're in there with them.

As the movie builds to its chaotic climax, I think I saw Weaver's character head for an exit.

Way ahead of you, sister.

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