I can’t remember the last time I was so disappointed in a movie. After the director’s last 3 movies (Parasite, Okja, and Snowpiercer, all of which I enjoyed), I was really looking forward to Bong Joon-ho’s latest, Mickey 17. The trailers made it look so good, so maybe by expectations were just too high, but honestly it’s not very good.
It takes place in the not-too-distant future, but mankind has come a long way very quickly. A scientist invented a procedure that prints out copies of human beings like a Xerox machine, but after the practice was outlawed on Earth (for very obvious reasons), the only way to get away with it is to leave Earth. Enter Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a TV celebrity and wanna-be politician with a cult-like following (sound familiar?), who has dreams of setting up his own colony on a new planet. He is taking applications from people who want to join him in the endeavor, but one person who really needs to get off the planet is Mickey (Robert Pattinson). Mickey owes a loan shark a ton of money and needs to disappear, but he has no skills that will get him a seat on the ship. Thus, he signs up to be an “expendable,” meaning he’ll take all the shit jobs during the 4 1/2 year trip, and if (when) he dies, they’ll just print a new version of himself. Thus, when the movie starts, we’re on Mickey 17.
As the film progresses, we get that backstory, as well as all of the stuff they put Mickey through during the trip. Between flashbacks and backstories, there is a real plot going on, involving Mickey 17 surviving his latest brush with death, but the people back on the ship are unaware and go ahead and print Mickey 18. There’s a strict “no doubles” law (why they have to follow this one and not the “no printing” one is anyone’s guess), so Mickey 17 and 18 need to quickly come up with a plan to save themselves from erasure. Also going on is Mickey 17’s run-in with an alien race, who threaten to kill all the humans.
The film is mildly amusing, in Bong’s typical zany dark humor style, but the laughs aren’t strong enough, and the story not compelling enough, to really keep you going. The political humor referencing our current climate is too on-the-nose, and perhaps knowing how Ruffalo is so anti-Trump in real life colored my viewing experience so that his performance is so completely over-the-top that I couldn’t really take him seriously. The one bright spot is Pattinson, who can flat out act. He just needs to get a couple really good roles in order to put some award hardware on the shelf. ★½
Jons Movie Takes 