Our entire life is a punishment.
(Mickey Barnes)
The highly expected (and most postponed release) new film of Bong Joon Ho, Mickey 17, with Robert Pattison in Multiple roles, is so-so. Frankly I don't get the enthusiastic positive reviews. The humor is lame at best with Pattison taking his ques from Jim Carrey's performance in Dumb and Dumber ! It's the Multiplicity Effect all over, clones (or how they're called here, "expendables" ), are getting dumb and dumber...duh. The film finally premiered at the Berlinale Film Fest in February with a worldwide release of March 7th.
Budgeted at 118 mill. $ (!!!), this is surely a flop for Warner Bros. whom imo did not put a lot of faith in the finished project. The whole thing feels uninspired, the jokes are and you don't care much for Mickey or the Mickeys. Bong's humour is very personal and it worked in all his films prior to this, from The Host to Mother, also the social commentary, class commentary, leftism, was much better in Snowpiercer, which was his 1st external project out of Korea, then a flop, now a cult film and a s***ty cash-in neverending TV (streaming) series. That is why I am gonna go gloves off on Bong here. Wasting four years on this film when you were on top of the world, able to do any film you'd like, totally free of charge (he had final cut on this!).
The source book is entitled Mickey 7 !!!, not to be confused with the 60's Mickey One ;), the material was customized by Bong for a more personal film for him, his 1st in the USA (shot in the UK Warner Leavesden studios), a follow-up to his all winning Parasite (2019).
Shot impeccably by Darius Khondji. Dark as his TM and white -ice (the planet Nifleheim) and claustrophobic industrial corridors and chambers. Music, some of it uninspired, some good, by Bong's collaborator Jung Jae-il (Okja, Parasite/ and the Squid Game series).
Mark Ruffalo plays over-the-top, same Grand Guignol style as in Poor Things but here he is more like an impression of an Vincent D'Onofrio but she surely channels Trump. Toni Colette too, operatic hysteric evil lady. The aliens/monsters "creepers" are cool, but I pretty doubt they'll make a merch out of them. Starship Troopers "bugs" came to mind, but with the cuteness required. The Korean designer did work before for Bong on The Host.
2 1/2 out of 5 / 5 out of 10
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