Mickey 17 is Frustrating

If nothing else, I can't think of many other movies that have been made on the ethics of cloning. It may be based on a book, but that doesn't mean Mickey 17 doesn't bring anything fresh to the table. Imagine that the Rebel Alliance and Freaky Friday had a kid, a really deadpan and humorous kid with a glib attitude towards death. I mean, it's not as if the crew of the massive space cruiser Mickey's been assigned to won't print him again with all of his memories intact if he dies for the sixteenth time or so. But let's stop and throw an intriguing variable into the mix. What if one of Mickey's clones were presumed dead and another version of him printed before the demise of the last? And what if the two clones met? How will Nasha, Mickey's love interest, react to duplicates of him? And if two versions of Mickey are running around, if you kill one of them, doesn't that mean that his mind and memories will be gone forever?

I want to start by commending Robert Pattinson's absolutely incredible range as an actor. He's likely one of the best young male performers alive today, possessing seemingly transformative abilities depending on what a screenplay demands of him. I'm used to his moody portrayal of Batman, but in Mickey 17, Pattinson is a goofy, deadpan, and lovable clone known as an "expendable," proving yet again that the man has come a long way since his Twilight days to become a truly versatile actor. The humor of this movie is non-stop and appreciably deadpan, a respectable commitment to tone that rarely grows wearisome - so long as it stays lighthearted. Still, the story it works with can be a messy one.

You see, the prologue of Mickey 17 is long, as in half an hour long. I understand that it's treated just as much as a part of the movie as any other, but the opening credits to the movie don't appear until around the thirty-minute mark, an unconventional and admittedly unnecessary and distracting deviation from the story. Likewise, the rest of Mickey 17 has plenty of problems. Its expository sequences are incredibly long-winded. Such sequences are entertaining and well-made, but their management is lacking, and the exposition of this movie is time-consuming and bloated without being useful enough to justify its self-indulgence. Still, the idea of duplicate clones when only one can be allowed to exist at a time is an amusing premise, and I'm always down to see fresh cinema. For all of its problems, Mickey 17 never seems anything less than original.

Nevertheless, Mickey 17 is not the most measured of movies when trying to be applicable. Many will complain about its political leanings, and just as many will praise them, but I'm mostly upset that Kenneth and Ylfa Marshall, the President and First Lady of Mickey's faction, if you will, are vague stereotypes of conservative politicians when Mickey and Nasha are so much more interesting. Mickey 17 is obviously trying to get talked about, and even if it underperformed at the box office, it certainly kicked the hornet's nest online. I merely wish I had more nice things to say about much of the movie, because there are parts of it that I genuinely really liked. However, the disconnect in quality between its stereotypical antagonists and thoroughly-conceived protagonists is not one of them. Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette put on more-than-fine performances as charismatic but morally-void politicians, even going so far as to possess some interesting and unique character traits. Nevertheless, they remain mere statements populating a world of characters shown to be people. This puts me in a weird position, because I genuinely liked many of the aspects that Mickey 17 handles with relatively more expertise. I liked its thorough realization of a distant world, I liked Robert Pattinson's performance, and I liked how funny this movie can be. I would keep asking for more, but it is what it is.

Mickey 17 works more often than it doesn't, but when it was written and directed by the man who helmed Parasite, one can't help but feel let down on some level. This movie certainly ruffled some feathers up and down the aisle on the level of politics with its thinly-veiled parodical portrayal of a Trump-like figure, regardless of the production team's insistence on otherwise. Yet, where the peanut gallery is upset because of their strong emotions, I'm upset because Mickey 17 couldn't make me feel enough. Between some excellent performances and original ideas, this movie is far from bad. But from occasional clumsiness to a level of long-windedness to a frustrating tendency to replace potential questions with one-dimensional statements, don't go into it expecting Parasite 2.0. Overall, Mickey 17 is good enough when it should have been great.

Mickey 17 - 7/10

1 Corinthians 15:45-49