Nobody could be sadder than I am to report that Mickey 17 is a disappointment.
I’ve been waiting eagerly for many months to see this latest effort by writer-director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer, The Host). I raced out to see it as soon as it opened in theaters, hitting one of its first shows at a multiplex near me and watching it entirely alone in a big empty theater. Maybe that dark solitude made it seem a bit longer than it really was, and a bit more leaden — but not by much. After a fairly energetic start, Mickey 17 drags along like a dying animal, leaking vitality all the way.
It doesn’t help that this dystopian sci-fi comedy seems loaded down by exposition, repeatedly flashing back to show us how some plotty development began. It had seemed like such a surefire premise in the fast and funny film previews about a lowly worker who’s unwittingly agreed to be an “Expendable,” assigned to every fatal hell-job in the galaxy, getting killed and “reprinted” over and over until there’s a system error and Mickey 17 lives to meet his next self, Mickey 18 (both played by Robert Pattinson). What will “Multiples” mean to Mickeys 17 and 18 as well as the sick capitalist system that spawned them?
Pattinson is terrific as the Mickeys. His Mickey 17 is slow and lovable, as soft and trusting as a puppy. But each Mickey has his temperamental variations — there was an earlier “whiny Mickey” — and Mickey 18 emerges with sharper edges. He’s sullen, suspicious, secretive, and ready to fight anyone in order to survive. Pattinson’s heavy, dark eyebrows suddenly intensify as the broodingly resentful Mickey 18. His jaw squares, his movements quicken, his voice roughens. If anyone can throw a wrench into this nightmarish cloning system of labor, he can.
And for a brief time after Mickey 18 arrives, there’s some energy and humor left in the narrative. How to keep their multiplicity a secret in the spaceship-bound colony,…
Auteur: Eileen Jones
