It’s hard to imagine how Our RoboCop Remake would play for someone who doesn’t only love the original Robocop, but has seen it quite a few times. A lot of the humor in Remake is broad, but enough of the choices are subtle and incisive (while sometimes still maintaining a wink), one has to be familiar with the source material.

The Remake project is the work of approximately fifty filmmakers who each took a different scene of Robocop and adapted it. Some are more straightforward than others; some use the beginning of the scene as a starting point for comedic interpretation, some just adapt through absurdist humor. Robocop has a lot of great lines–pretty much every actor taking over for Kurtwood Smith and Miguel Ferrer does an amazing job–and a lot of violence to comment on. The scene where Robocop stops a rape in progress becomes frantic ultra-violence in a way Paul Verhoeven never got to show.

And Remake is definitely better towards the beginning; later, once Robocop appears, the filmmakers tend to go for the inherent humor having a guy in a bad costume allows. There are exceptions–the last few scenes (before the finish) are fantastic, with a couple musical numbers and a great action figure-based one.

But the early scenes, with puppets, babies playing adults, interpretive dance… those are fantastic.

There are some good animated sequences too.

Remake is, overall, uneven. But it’s still a great time. Though probably mostly for Robocop aficionados.