Mickey 17

MICKEY 17 from 2025 is ostensibly my kind of cinematic oddity.  But I had a feeling it wouldn't completely land.  It's one of those movies with lots of crazy/funny ideas without much, if any, cohesion.  A film that might've worked had it stuck with just one of its many wild notions and riffed on it until an inevitably clever ending.  Instead, writer/director Bong Joon Ho, who adapts Edward Ashton's novel, introduces multiple threads that never quite gel and drives them to a rather conventional finale.

It's science fiction in a not too far away future commenting on present day, as the genre tends to do.  Mickey (Robert Pattinson) has signed up to become an "Expendable" - a grunt worker who, upon dying each time, will be cloned in a 3-D printer with previous memories intact.  He has joined a mission to the ice planet Niflheim, running from a loan shark back on Earth.  The seventeenth iteration of Mickey will find himself in no man's land when he is supposed to die but does not.  Those odd life forms he finds himself surrounded by called "Creepers" (which will be crucial to the film's third act) do not eat him but rather save his life.  The scientists on the ship are unaware of this.

What will happen when Mickey 17 discovers that Mickey 18 has already been printed out?  "Multiples". as they're known.  Will despot politician/egomaniac Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) - who had two failed electoral bids on Earth- and his Lady Macbeth-like spouse Ylfa (Toni Collette) have them eliminated per his decree?

The clone storyline would've been sufficient.  We get lots of clutter in MICKEY 17.  Details that while interesting just seem to bloat everything (including the running time).  Some threads - such as those concerns about caloric intake - are never really developed.  Some characters, like Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), a security agent who shows interest in Mickey 17 are jettisoned.  For her final scene she gets to do that wind up middle finger bit we've seen in too many other movies. 

Ashton and Ho have many targets: political, religious, the scientific community, and especially capitalism, but none are really hit.  The level of satire here is not exactly stellar.  The comedy is very heavy handed, downright silly at times.  Ho's ambitions are grand, and his film is highly entertaining and great to look at, courtesy of cinematographer Darius Khondji. But like so many sci-fi would-be epics, sinks under its own weight.

Pattinson gives at least two good performances.  Ruffalo goes way over the top, his second annoyingly eccentric turn in a row after POOR THINGS.  Colette fares little better.