After a stunning debut, this is a disappointment

Rating: 6/10 (25 August 2013)

Shades of "Donnie Darko" here as again, a successful young filmmaker, lauded and certain for further glory crashes to earth with a a whimper, not a bang.
I was going to say "flies too close to the sun" but in this case no such lofty goal was attempted. Director Neill Blomkamp's District Nine heralded a new blazing talent in genre cinema. Bursting with moral outrage, this thinly disguised invective against apartheid by a white South African was a showstopper. Its premise - aliens invade, was hardly new. Its subtext, how we treat the invaders, how we treat each other and how inaccurately we peg our species on the moral scale was superb, fresh and intelligently handled.
Alas. In Elysium Blomkamp hits on another a surefire hotbutton topic. His scenery is designed by amongst others: Bladerunner's Syd Mead (Oh yes, and it shows). His cinema verite style is present and his fascinating ingénue Sharlto Copley is also present (playing against District 9's type this time - but surely a Dinero in the making).
So what went wrong? The main problem with this film is that it is a Michael Bay film. That's shorthand for: there is no subtext. Reviewers often call Bay's films "boneheaded" and most are. But some (very few) are good! What's essential to understand about a Michael Bay film is that the lack of a subtext or a "deeper meaning" is emphatically intentional.
This was Blomkamp's summer actioner. From what I see on the screen he never intended to spark a single "Obamacare" thread. The subject is too thinly treated - everything the public has focused their ire and admiration upon is essentially an afterthought.
Here's another, more fatal problem with the film, Elysium.
It Looks Cheap.
Yes it shows the five or show glorious panning shots of Mead's Torus Spacestation that you see in the trailer - but THAT'S IT. The rest is mundane helicopter footage of favelas - familiar to audiences from Fast and Furious (film or FBI stumble - be my guest) and a very few sequences about on a par but not surpassing Blomkamp's incredible "alive inside" advert for some motor company, way back when.
There's little else to say. People will nitpick the ludicrous (to anyone with even a modicum of experience with computers) plot - and that's only worth mentioning because it betrays a general lack of care to the finished product.
The dagger in my heart is this: recently Blomkamp extolled the virtues of that live action 'Masterpiece' Transformers the movie. Let me tell you: Transformers The Movie is a better movie than Elysium the movie.
I just hope Blomkamp realises just what a great film his first effort was and we don't end up with another lazy hack like Kevin Smith or a deluded pseudo auteur like Tarantino.
Some people need to heed Samuel Goldwyn's maxim: "the harder I work, the luckier I get!"
{Also worth mentioning: rare misfire from Matt Damon. He or his people always pick the best material. I'm surprised.}