Like a conductor playing an orchestra of incongruous emotions, writer/director Bong Joon Ho has never been content to score a simple symphony of sympathy.
Mickey 17 is very funny. Mickey 17 is very sad.
Watching a blathering narcissistic politician get mocked in outer space? Funny! Seeing innocent alien animals get harmed? Sad! Observing the futility of an “expendable” everyman as he is treated as cattle, shamed to his face as disposable, and forced to endure an endless cycle in service of elite, religious overlords? It’s either laugh until you cry or vice versa…
Edward Ashton’s novel, Mickey 7, gets turned up by double digits. It still follows Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), a generally affable dumb-dumb who is Jason Mendoza from The Good Place without the Blake Bortles references. This comparison is a massive compliment. His buddy, Timo (Steven Yeun), convinces Mickey to take money from a loan shark to start a macaron shop. Funny! After the macaron dispensary fails, the pair must flee Earth to escape being murdered, and the only job Mickey sees himself fit for is “expendable.” Sad!
An expendable is someone who dies. A lot. They then get reprinted by a human waste–repurposing 3D printer on steroids. Memories get downloaded, and the clone picks up where they left off. Sort of. There are little glitches that happen. The process isn’t perfect, and neither are the new meat sacks.
Mickey is aboard a spaceship headed to a planet set to be colonized by Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), and their followers. Marshall is an ignorant, pompous ass obsessed with his image who uses religion to manipulate the masses, luring them with false promises of riches and a glorious future he cannot provide. Regrettably, it is simply impossible to know who is the target of this satirical figure in this.
This is still the general setup by the way.
The bulk of the movie involves a glitch with the person-generating process. Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who has been Mickey’s girlfriend through all of his incarnations, is in some ways the real audience surrogate. She whips through uproarious laughter at the shenanigans before taking a breather at rest-stops of anger, disbelief, and nihilism. The whole thing roars to a conclusion that feels unattainable to those of us living through the present.
Mickey 17 isn’t likely to be hailed as one of Bong Joon Ho’s best. It probably should be. And it definitely is near-the-top of Pattinson’s career output. No, he doesn’t go full Tatiana Maslany from Orphan Black and dazzle with his ability to differentiate various versions of himself. He does play a remarkably complex doofus. He endows his bumbling boob with a unique kindness.
It’s easy to do the “nice idiot.” It is hard to pull off “unintelligent-due-to-circumstance but still possessed of unique, important insights and compassion for others they haven’t earned through their treatment of him.” Many are asking how to be kind in an increasingly cruel world. Mickey, at least one of him, leads by example. That’s a testimony to the filmmaker and the performer.
Mickey 17 was supposed to come out in March of 2024. It wouldn’t have changed anything. But watching it then would have felt more hopeful, more aspirational, than the feeling of watching it now. Now, it feels like a brutal reminder of how so many people see the world: filled with replaceable “others” consigned to suffer for convenience. In March of last year, maybe this comedy, as dark as a black hole, would have felt like a warning or wake up call. Now, it produces laughter that sounds like a whimper and feels like defeat.
Sad!
Grade = A
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Kristian Lin at Fort Worth Weekly scores the best headline of the week (click to see it) and says “Mickey 17 is much better at raising laughs than at treating its underlying serious issues, but then, I can use a science-fiction movie that looks as good as either of the Dune films but is much funnier. How many Oscar-winning directors would let themselves be this silly on this big a budget? Bong does, which is why we cherish him.”
Katie Smith-Wong at Flick Feast says “In Bong’s final cut, he delivers action, humour and elaborate set pieces in his biggest film to date. He masterfully balances his trademark elements of dark comedy, classism, and production design but there are some rough edges.”
Siddhant Adlakha at Joy Sauce says “Given the movie’s initial March 2024 release date, some of these real-world similarities are serendipitous, but they speak to just how dialed-in Bong’s satire is when it comes to American politics.”