Somehow, 79% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of185 reviews)
Runtime: 137 agonizing minutes
Directed by: Bong Joon Ho
Starring: Robert Pattison, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Anamaria Vartolomei
From: Warner Bros.
So, it is extremely rare for me to mark a review as a spoiler on Letterboxd. In fact, in the twelve (!) years I've been here, there's only memories of doing so once before. However, it's impossible for me to air my grievances without delivering spoilers to prove why I (unlike most people already) despised Mickey 17.
One day I have to revisit Snowpiercer; don't even read my old review as it's bad for a variety of reasons. Just note that my memories were that the opening act was horrendous and the movie was a lame, obvious ham-fisted attack against capitalism. I don't always love capitalism myself, but unfortunately Mickey 17 is yet ANOTHER movie from Bong which delivers this message, and it is even more blunt than in Snowpiercer. Why don't you start playing another tune, Bong? To clarify, Memories of Murder was disappointing but The Host is very good and while not “best movie ever” like some think, Parasite is still great.
Note that my strong dislike of the film is not because I was “offended” that far-left Mark Ruffalo got to play an OBVIOUS Trump caricature. Even the rube crowd I saw this with understood the message, at least judging by a random dude in the audience yelling out an anti-Trump phrase. I am definitely not a Donnie fan (apologies to anyone that is) yet my preferences are to see movies so I can forget about who's in the Oval Office, Donnie's return to power and what's happened in the administration so far already. Seeing a garish parody that becomes more irritating during the runtime did not make me happy. There is dread in seeing what “certain YouTube accounts” will think of that spoof, or other moments that they'll shriek “WOKE! DEI!” about. I do NOT support such people.
Then again, the movie itself becomes worse and worse during the runtime. The first act, I was mostly enjoying it. There are some laughs throughout, even in the final 1/3 I found to be intolerable. The premise of a future where Robert Pattison flees Earth and because he didn't read the terms & conditions, clones of him are created that are expendable and he has died 16 times previously for the sake of helping everyone else on the 4 year missing in outer space—I can work with such a premise.
Sadly, after the first act, the movie becomes a mess between the increased presence of those aliens, an introduction of a new girl that complicates the relationship that Mickey has with another girl... who then vanishes after like 20 minutes, never to appear again until the conclusion. And why in the blue F was some guy randomly dressed like a PIGEON in a few scenes?! Anyhow, it's the first movie I've seen Anamaria Vartolomei in and she's sure a pretty girl... but the presence of certain “modern movie sins” rear their ugly head and naturally I wasn't happy.
To clarify something I said in the review for Conclave, the reason why I'm not interested in Anora: for awhile I've known that it has almost 500 F-bombs and well, that's an automatic “no” for me. I am no prude or Puritan here; foul language (especially the F word) has just become a lazy crutch and tired in modern cinema. Well, after the first act, in comes all the cursing, usually yelled. Another sin: a picture that doesn't know when to end—the conclusion to this felt unceasing. An odd problem that occurred a few times: sound mixing straight out of a Christopher Nolan film. I saw this at a Dolby Cinema so there shouldn't have been dialogue meant to be heard that I couldn't understand whatsoever.
Silly voices aside, Pattison was the highlight playing the dual characters of Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, the yin and yang of their personalities. The cast as a whole was fine; it was the garish OOT nature and how bad the final act was (even a percentage of the movie's fans feel the final 1/3 was a downgrade) which left me hating the film. Most will like this movie far more than me; if you can tolerate 2 plus hours of someone yelling their political beliefs into your ear, more power to you.
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