Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Repo Chick Blu-ray Movie Review

"An unlikely hero in a chaotic world." That's quite an understatement...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown May 4, 2011

On the list of strangest films I've seen this year, Repo Chick ranks near the top. Looney Tunes buffoonery, grating valley-girl performances, audacious low-budget green-screening, kitschy Dollar Store miniatures and bargain bin production design run wild, all candy-coated in Pepto Bismol pink. Every scene squeals, laughs and foams at the mouth like a wiry, unhinged madman; every shot is sure to leave filmfans wondering what writer/director Alex Cox, self-proclaimed champion of shoestring filmmaking, poured in his morning coffee. And while Cox's zany B-movie carnival will no doubt delight those who enjoy a healthy helping of Brie in their campy cinematic curiosities, it will exasperate most anyone else. Just don't mistake Repo Chick for a sequel to Cox's 1984 cult classic, Repo Man; the two films may share the same father, but they couldn't be more different.

Jonet's got a gun. Bum bum, bum bum. Her whole world's come undone...

Spoiled Los Angeles celebutante Pixxi De La Chasse (Jaclyn Jonet) is thrust into the... ahem, real world after being disinherited by her ludicrously wealthy father (Xander Berkeley) and being told she has to hold down a job if she ever wants to see another dime. But Pixxi is no Paris Hilton. When repo men repossess her car, Pixxi and her entourage -- dim-witted confidant Eggi (Jenna Zablocki), fashionisto Savage Dave (Zahn McClarnon) and brainless mohawked muscle SixSixSix (Danny Arroyo) -- score the emotionally frazzled heiress a job as a professional repo agent. And with massive credit collapses crippling the country, there's plenty of work to be done. Pixxi turns out to be a natural; a fact that doesn't go unnoticed by her new colleagues, streetwise jefe Aguas (Robert Beltran, Big Love), right-hand man Arizona Gray (Miguel Sandoval Entourage) and tough-as-nails repo woman Lola (Rosanna Arquette, Pulp Fiction). The dizzying Saturday morning cartoon insanity and inanity that ensues involves a fabled train with a million-dollar bounty, a band of inept eco-terrorists, six nuclear bombs, a fanatical crusade to criminalize the game of golf, and a zany race against trigger-happy military officials.

But amidst all the lunacy and camera mugging, Cox neglects to make any of his wildly penned caricatures likable characters or, for that matter, any of his story less slippery than his satirical jabs. Pixxi and her cohorts are an amusing bunch... for a while. After a good fifteen minutes though, the pink princess and her entourage's antics wear terribly thin. Jonet pinches her lips and raises her eyebrow, but never proves her worth. Even when Pixxi excels at her trade, the reasons she succeeds remain a mystery. Zablocki shouts, McClarnon primps and Arroyo stares into space, just as Cox demands. But the trio is left in the dust the moment Cox presumably grows as bored with their presence as we do. Even Arquette is given little to do, leaving Beltran and Sandoval to handle all the heavy lifting. Make no mistake, Cox is trying to say quite a few things with Repo Chick; he takes countless shots at the Hollywood studio system, the current crop of inexplicably annointed reality-show celebrities, the self-consuming irony of consumer-driven cultures, and the sad state of the US economy. But Cox is no Romero, and Repo Chick's big ideas are smothered by chirpy fringe-comedy and absurdist performances.

Even so, there's something inexplicably intriguing about an ambitious, genre-bending indie shot in ten days with less than $200,000. Cox's dystopian near-future is an artificial one by design. Matchbox cars litter a junkyard, toy trains rattle through a miniature city, and plastic models dot Pixxi's misadventures in property retrieval. If nothing else, the film's skewed scale and green-screen backgrounds represent a bold, headfirst plunge into minimalism. And it works, at least by Cox's standards. Repo Chick is the defiant director's firm middle finger to Hollywood; a gesture that began with the relative failure of Walker in 1997 and stiffened when Repo Man rights-owner Universal Pictures (who released Repo Men in 2010) tasked its lawyers with bringing the production of Repo Chick to a halt. (Cox threatened legal action as well and Universal called an unofficial, uneasy truce.) For all its posturing, there's enough sparks firing beneath Repo Chick's hood to leave B-movie junkies stuffing their mouths with Jiffy Pop. It isn't as smart as it thinks it is, it isn't as inventive as its do-it-yourself production design suggests, nor is it as entertaining as its small but ardent legion of fans insist. It's merely a bizarre micro-budget microfeature the more daring among you will enjoy sampling. After all, it's risks like this that make Netflix such an indispensable service.

Repo Chick Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Repo Chick isn't a stunning beauty; nor is CAV's bruised 1080p/AVC-encoded presentation. Primaries range from pale to punchy to punch-drunk, black levels hardly constitute the use of the word "black," contrast is woefully inconsistent and altogether weak, and detail waxes and wanes on several occasions. And while most of the transfer's issues and eyesores trace back to Cox's special effects, Steven Fierberg's photography or other shortcomings attributable to the film's source, the image struck me as unfinished; another unfortunate victim of Repo Chick's tighter-than-tight budget and production schedule. The image isn't a complete failure -- closeups are teeming with nicely resolved fine textures, edge definition is generally pleasing, Cox and Fierberg's intentions have been preserved, and the whole of the presentation leaves its DVD counterpart in a bloody heap -- but it doesn't justify its price tag either. It doesn't help that artifacting, banding, aliasing and other oddities appear throughout, even if they remain, by and large, a minor, almost negligible nuisance. All in all, Repo Chick could look much better. Then again, I suppose it could look much worse.

Repo Chick Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

CAV's Dolby TrueHD 5.0 surround track doesn't alleviate any of the sting. Without any LFE support, Repo Chick is a fairly weightless experience; one that never exhibits the power and tenacity Cox's dystopian spectacle seems to demand. Likewise, the rear speakers contribute little, often making the soundfield as two-dimensional as the film's green-screen backgrounds. Directionality is lacking, pans are decent at best, and immersion isn't on the agenda. Thankfully, dialogue is bright, crisp and carefully balanced in the mix, effects are clean and clear, and Chick's synthy music is given plenty of opportunities to shine. In the end, it's a serviceable but flat track that never completely satisfies.

Repo Chick Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Repo Chick serves up a pair of features: a revealing behind-the-scenes featurette with make-the-best-of-it director Alex Cox (HD, 29 minutes) that covers the film's development, low budget struggles, story, tone, visual effects and green screen shoot, and Chick's trailer (HD, 2 minutes).

Repo Chick Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Repo Chick will win its share of fans. It's weird and wacky enough to all but guarantee someone, somewhere will fall in love with its bubbly burst of lunacy. But strip away Cox's low-budget know-how and the film's toy-box visual effects, and there isn't much to get excited about. CAV's Blu-ray release has its own problems. Its video transfer is inconsistent, its TrueHD 5.0 mix is underwhelming, and its special features, while candid and reasonably extensive, can be milked in thirty minutes. Most of you should avoid Repo Chick. Others -- and you know who you are -- should add it to your Netflix queue and take a drink of its fizzy Coxian brew.