Nothing against most of the acting or any of the production value or special effects. A lot against the writing though. Mickey 17 is a movie that doesn’t feel focused or grounded… it’s overbroad while also under-written. It’s a movie that dies on the screenwriting level alone.
It’s about a colony ship on the way to a planet with the not-so-subtle name of Niflheim. Robert Pattinson plays a guy who volunteers for the hard assignments that allow him to die and be 3D printed back to life. Things don’t go well when they reach the planet and Mickey #17 winds up with an illegal clone after he encounters the native wildlife.
What is this movie even about? What is it saying? It’s clearly full of dark satire and it seems to want to say something about human rights… but I’m not sure what or how it all hangs together. But once you get over clones and cartoonishly over-the-top leaders, they chuck in ideas of colonialism and the lives of the indigenous creatures. What the aliens and the clones have to do with each other was lost on me. What they both had to do with the satirical captain and wife was even more befuddling.
Mark Ruffalo and Toni Colette as said captain and wife are on such a different acting road than everyone else in the movie. Maybe not their fault since their satirical dialog was so broad that maybe there was nothing else they could do. Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson’s Mickey is such a dumb mug that it was hard to side with him. Credit to the actor for playing two different versions of the same dude, I suppose.
It also doesn’t help a lot that I didn’t find the weird and quirky dark comedy very funny from anyone (not just Ruffalo and Colette). I was pretty stone-faced the whole way through.
For befuddling me over what the point of this film was or who beyond sci-fi and Bong Joon Ho fans will enjoy it, I’m giving it a pretty low score. I didn’t enjoy much of it… I spent most of my time frowning at the screen as they attempted big idea sci-fi without focus. I can’t argue the production values but I can argue the point and the connective tissue. Still on the Bong Joon Ho creative train, at least.
Score: 69