First some context. Paul Verhoevan's 1987 RoboCop is a classic. Not only is it a great action film, a brilliant cop thriller about corporate and political mis-deads but it's also a darkly funny science fiction satire in the way that the Judge Dredd movie SHOULD have been. In other words, 'close to perfection'.
RoboCop 2 on the other hand is a hastily produced sequel that, while entertaining, is riddled with problems. Chief of these is the massively over the top, silly script from Dark Knight Returns legend Frank Miller which gives us a pantomime Major, a pre-teen psychopath drugdealer, violent robot slapstick and a tone that's definitely more 'comic book'. It's also wildly inconsistent in tone ranging from broadly comical set pieces to ultra-violent gunfights to tender drama. Character-wise, RoboCop's story arc is dispensed with in the first 20 minutes and from then on we just get daft stuff being chucked at us for another hour and a half.
Irvin (The Empire Strikes Back) Kershner's direction is solid but unremarkable, Peter Weller is great (given the thankless material he's got to work with), Dan O'Herlihy gets to chew the scenery and Tom Noonan gets to play a less creepy version of the nutter he played in Last Action Hero. It's nice to see the film look glossier than it's predecessor but that comes at a price with it's bright, day-glow, non-threatening sheen.
The uneven nature of RoboCop 2 is at the very heart of it's troubles. On one side you have the amazing sop motion effects of Phil Tippett, seen mostly during the large scale finale. At the other end of the spectrum you have Leonard Rosenman's abysmally mis-judged score with it's 1940's orchestrations and choral section chanting 'RoboCop!' With more thought put into the scripting, and more time for Irvin Kershner to bring the elements tonally together (he replaced original director Tim Hunter just before shooting began) then the Robo sequel might have worked in a manner akin to Lethal Weapon 2. Alas, what you get instead is a hodgepodge of the good, the bad and the outright ugly.
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