Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Bong Joon-ho
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo
Michael Cera did it in Youth in Revolt. Jesse Eisenberg did it in
The Double. Jake Gyllenhaal did it in
Enemy. Now it's Robert Pattinson's turn. Bong Joon-ho's
Mickey 17 is the latest movie that asks its leading man to
play two versions of themselves, one a socially awkward nebbish, the other a
confident and sinister alpha male. Pattinson plays the part(s) well, but the
movie around him is a fiasco, perhaps the worst ever made by a filmmaker
directly after landing a Best Picture Oscar.
Loosely adapted from Edward Ashton's novel 'Mickey7' (the film went
into production before the novel was published, with liberal changes made to
the narrative), Mickey 17 boasts and squanders a fun premise.
In the near future, science has discovered a way to bring people back from
the dead via a form of human 3D printing (an idea explored more successfully
in the recent Czech sci-fi thriller
Restore Point). While the process is banned on Earth, the same laws don't apply in outer
space and so volunteers known as "expendables" are hired to serve as human
guinea pigs to test if distant planets are inhabitable. One such expendable
is Mickey Barnes (Pattinson), who volunteers for the role to escape violent
debt collectors back on Earth.
When we first meet Mickey he's in his 17th incarnation and seems about to
perish after falling deep into a crevice on the planet Niflheim. Mickey is
surprised when Niflheim's inhabitants - creatures that resemble a cuddly
miniature version of
Dune's sandworms - don't eat him as expected but instead lead him to safety.
When Mickey returns to base he's shocked to discover that because he was
presumed dead, a new version of himself, Mickey 18, has been printed, and is
now living with his girlfriend (Naomi Ackie).
It takes a long time for Mickey 17 to set up this premise,
forcing us to sit through a host of interminable and unnecessary flashbacks.
Once the plot is in motion, the film doesn't know what to do next. Very
little is made of the comic potential of the two physically identical yet
very different Mickeys, as the film gets distracted with other subplots and
side characters, including Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a
Trump-esque politician who hopes to turn Niflheim into a white supremacist
colony planet; a criminal played by Steven Yeun who is dodging the
same money-lenders as Mickey; and a horny French girl (Anamaria Vartolomei) who has the hots for Mickey. The movie fails to provide an explanation
for why after remaining the same nebbishy Mickey for 17 incarnations, the
18th version of Mickey has not only a completely different personality but a
different voice (17 sounds like Tobey Maguire, 18 like Michael
Madsen).
Far from naturally complementing one another, the various subplots bash
against each other and prove a distraction from whatever the overall
plot actually is. Much of Mickey 17 plays like a failed TV
pilot, wasting time setting up characters that we're never going to spend
any real time with. Ackie, Vartolomei and Yeun try their best to make something of their paper thin
roles, but Ruffalo is absolutely taking the piss with an
embarrassingly bad Trump impersonation that quickly becomes annoying.
Marshall's motivations are never entirely clear, and we're often left
wondering why he allows Mickey to throw a spanner in his works. There are
other confusing aspects, like Mickey's sudden recovery from food poisoning
when Marshall's wife (Toni Collette) uses him as a tester for her
new line of sauces.
Filmed as far back as 2022, Mickey 17 spent a lot of time
sitting on a shelf before Warners decided to unleash it on an unprepared
public. It smacks of a troubled production, complete with voice-over
narration that desperately tries to explain the rules of this world to the
audience but mostly just describes the action we're seeing on screen. The
storytelling here is so messy that watching Mickey 17 is
like listening to a drunk try to tell a complicated joke. The movie will
introduce a concept and then waste 10 minutes over-explaining it with
flashbacks. Mickey 17 is a film that presumes its audience
are morons, and its contempt for the viewer is summed up when Pattinson's
voiceover tells us that 17 is followed by 18. With its juvenile humour and
mugging performances, Mickey 17 plays like a love letter to
the awful sci-fi movies of Luc Besson, but with the brightness turned
down.
Mickey 17 is in UK/ROI cinemas
from March 7th.
