As the buzz began to die down about the 97th Academy Awards ceremony, movie fans set their sights on the following Friday and the release of “Mickey 17,” the latest film from South Korean director and 2020 Oscars darling Bong Joon-ho. Bong’s previous venture, the black comedy thriller “Parasite,” received six nominations and four wins, including Best Picture, so his next project was saddled with high expectations. Although “Mickey 17” doesn’t quite reach the heights of “Parasite,” it is still a welcome addition to Bong’s oeuvre, delivering his signature blend of societal critique and absurd humor.
The film centers around the titular Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), a down-on-his-luck man who, in a desperate attempt to escape a vicious loan shark, joins an expedition to colonize the ice planet Niflheim. In order to ensure his selection, he signs up to be an “Expendable:” a human lab rat sent on all manner of unquestionably lethal assignments, taking solace only in the fact that after he dies, cutting-edge human printer technology will spit out a new copy of his body and implant it with a backup of his memories. The science team placed in charge of Mickey, whose sniveling leader (Cameron Britton) steals every scene he’s in, are almost gleeful in their disregard for his personhood, subjecting him to needlessly cruel experiments without informing him of their intentions beforehand.
It is a delightfully grim, thematically rich premise — interrogating the demands of capitalism upon the working class, the cost of scientific advancement and even the nature of the self. It is given a critical human dimension thanks to Pattinson’s phenomenal performance. Despite being known mostly for stoic, brooding roles, he completely disappears into the character of Mickey 17: timid, a touch simple-minded — though thankfully never as cloyingly oblivious as his nasally, Forrest Gump-esque voice would suggest — and entirely out of his depth.
Pattinson puts in the same level of dedication to his physical comedy work, too. He makes elegantly inelegant use of his body throughout the movie, exemplified by a dinner scene that devolves into set-shattering chaos as Mickey 17 experiences the side effects of an experimental growth hormone in his meal. It is as hilarious as it is deeply unsettling, and the closest the film gets to rivaling some of the more visceral sequences in “Parasite.”
The true comedic high point of the movie, however, is Mickey 18: a fiercer, more bitter incarnation created after Mickey 17 is mistakenly presumed dead. Mickey 18’s complete exasperation at his precursor’s meekness, as well as his (only briefly) complicated relationship with Mickey 17’s girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie, who brings just as much energy as Pattinson) earned some of the biggest laughs at my showing.
Pattinson effectively steals the show from himself here, prompting viewers online to joke that he should be considered for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor at the next Oscars. I do wish we had gotten more glimpses of the previous sixteen Mickeys, though; the film doesn’t mention that each clone has a different personality until after Mickey 18 is introduced, and even then, the idea never feels explored as much as it deserves to be.
Unfortunately for the two Mickeys, their simultaneous existence (a situation known as “multiples”) is a regulatory violation, forcing them into a reluctant partnership to avoid being “permanently deleted.” This brings them into conflict with expedition commander Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a half-televangelist, half-Trump parody who gives blustery speeches to his cultish employees about exterminating the “creepers” (Niflheim’s bug-like native inhabitants, who will feel familiar to anyone who’s seen Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind”) in order to develop a residential paradise where the mission’s crew can “spread their superior human seed.”
The satire of America’s current political climate is hard to miss, and the film’s persistent humiliation of Marshall by other characters is undeniably cathartic, but ultimately, I found it too on-the-nose (in a flashback scene on Earth, his supporters literally wear red baseball caps emblazoned with his slogan) and far too unfocused to truly work. He bounces between being a pathetic, grifting dullard puppetted around by his equally repugnant wife (Toni Collette), and a menacing would-be dictator fueled by genuine anger.
This contradiction, while potentially interesting, does not end up amounting to anything, making Marshall’s character feel thematically muddled. It doesn’t help that Ruffalo’s performance, while far from awful, is certainly the weakest out of the main cast, not doing quite enough to sell either aspect of the character and weakening his villainous presence as a result.
Much like its protagonist(s), “Mickey 17” feels like two disparate entities competing for time and attention. Either one on its own—a bleak character study about a man forced into unimaginable exploitation or a biting, farcical affair about a spacefaring megachurch—would have made for an excellent movie. I don’t know if either route was a possibility for this production, given that the creative team likely wanted to remain faithful to the book they were adapting (Edward Ashton’s “Mickey7”).
What I do know, however, is that the route they did take resulted in a feature whose most affecting, personal elements are drowned out as it approaches the third act, and whose grapplings with imperialism, environmental destruction and modern-day fascism feel frustratingly underdeveloped, then mostly ignored in the ending (which I will not spoil, except to say that I found its tone rather unearned).
While far from the Bong fan’s must-watch I had hoped for, “Mickey 17” is still a very enjoyable time. Pattinson’s performance alone is worth the ticket price, complemented by very strong production design and sharp cinematography (and a couple of very clever title card drops). It asks intriguing questions, even if it doesn’t explore them quite as satisfyingly as films like “Parasite.” If you’re looking to scratch your cinephile itch over spring break, you could do a lot worse than this. Bring a friend! Or a clone of yourself, if you prefer.
