‘Mickey 17’ (review)

It kills me to type these next few words:

Bong Joon Ho’s long delayed and eagerly anticipated, Mickey 17, is sadly, in my opinion not worth the over year long wait. As someone who was ecstatic for this film to come out, this is a real bummer.

Mickey 17, the follow up to Bong Joon Ho’s Academy Award winning, incredible social thriller, Parasite.

Mickey 17 should be a strange, off-beat cautionary tale about cloning, identity, power, and what it means to be a human being.

Instead it devolves into a film about the dangers of putting your faith in the perfection of sauces.

Which in of itself would also be an incredible movie.

Alas, this is not it.

The film follows Mickey Barnes, a down on his luck macaron confectioner who, along with his partner Timo, played by Steven Yuen, find themselves at the mercy of the world’s most dangerous loan shark.

A man who would rather slowly torture and kill you rather than get his money back.

In hopes of escaping the loan shark forever, they both volunteer for an insane space journey led by a multiple-time failed political leader and wannabe cult leader, Kenneth Marshall played by a “mouthsy toothed”, over the top Mark Ruffalo. In his haste to escape dismemberment Mickey accidentally volunteers to be an “expendable” on the journey. His job is to die. And die. And die some more. In fact, it is the entire reason for this movie. At least it should have been.

I was hoping for another smart, socially-conscious, dark comedy about what it is to be human. I wanted to follow each clone as it develops, starting with the original Mickey. What happens when you not only can clone a person but you can store his collected memories, experiences, and shove those into the newly printed vessel.

Do you really die? Is the new clone really you? With each subsequent version new memories and experiences are gained and gathered that the previous clone had, but the one before it did not. Isn’t that just life? How would that change the clone, and what happens if there is a momentary glitch in the upload of the memory files? Well that is what makes Mickey 17 unique.

We follow this iteration of the Mickeys, hence the title of the film. That is until something happens. The experiment is not only thrown out of whack but a violation in the systems protocols occurs putting Mickey and the entire space colony in jeopardy.

What could have been a really solid look into the uniqueness and also the conventionality of humans, devolves into an uneven two hours plus of convoluted storylines, unnecessary characters, undeveloped side stories, wasted characters, and too much Kenneth Marshall.

Ruffalo’s Marshall and his ridiculous Trump-like caricature is extremely ill-timed given the current political chaos happening right now. It really doesn’t sit well. He and his equally unhinged wife, Ylfa, who’s obsession with the perfect sauce takes up way too much of the run time. I really lost all interest in their shenanigans throughout the film.

Their story took me away from the development of the story of Mickey and his subsequent clones. It also siphoned time away from the development of Mickey’s girlfriend, Nasha, and how she could love each incarnation of Mickey even though each one is slightly different. We get a brief glimpse of this in a quick flashback but I wanted more. I also wanted more about the backstory of him and his friend Timo and how is it that not only did Mickey stay friends with him after all he pulled but also how is Timo still his friend after all the changes the Mickey clones have gone through. There was a real missed opportunity to show that bond and why the audience should even care about Timo.

The movie is based on the novel “Mickey 7” written by Edward Ashton. Bong Joon Ho decided to add 10 more clones because maybe he thought more would be better?

Well I think that if he had just stuck to the original 7 and spent more time focused on their uniqueness and what makes them all still Mickey he might have been on to something more than an rudderless and meandering story that really never truly finds what it wants to say.

*  *  *  *  *  *
Produced by Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner,
Bong Joon-ho, Dooho Choi
Based on Mickey7 by Edward Ashton
Written and Directed by Bong Joon ho
Starring Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, S
teven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo