Mickey 17 (2025)
Directed by Bong Joon Ho
Warner Bros. Pictures, 137 minutes, R (language, violence, sexual content, substance abuse)
★★★★
After the award-winning Parasite, South Korean director Bong Joon Ho made Mickey 17, which made nearly $132 million. Yet, it lost tons of money because Warner’s budget was more than $250 million. Many fans of Parasite called the film an artistic failure, though I liked it.
Mickey 17 is a science-fiction/slapstick/black comedy that borrows elements from numerous other films, though its script is based on the eponymous Edward Ashton novel. It is filled with in-jokes and satire. Joon is an English football fan and modeled several characters on players. Others are parodies of politicians, religious figures, scientists, and businessmen.
In the year 2050, the Earth is beset with great environmental damage. The scientific and political establishments seek to transplant human beings to an allegedly idyllic planet called Niflheim. The long journey is headed by failed lawmaker Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffolo), a composite of bombastic politicians like Donald Trump, Mussolini, and Robert F. Kennedy Junior. The crew consists largely of individuals who haven’t done well on earth. Timo (Steven Yeu) owes a loan shark a lot of money and is unaware that the Elon Musk-like Darius Blank (Ian Hanmore) is aboard the ship to collect the debt at any cost, including cutting Timo into five pieces. Nothing has gone right for Micky Barnes (Robert Pattison) whose sole friend is the obnoxious and unreliable Timo. In a satire of agreement statements, Mickey’s volunteers to be an expendable without reading the contract conditions. He just wants a new start and a better look at the recruiter’s legs.
Expendable is true to its title. Mickey is a lab rat to test dangerous vaccines, foods, and poisons. His 17 designation means he has died 16 previous times, plopped into a copier holding his memories and DNA patterns, and “reprinted” Mickey is surprisingly popular among the crew, partly because everyone wants to know, “What’s it like to die?” They–each Mickey has personality differences– do, however, have a serious girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) who doesn’t like the way Mickeys are treated. Once they “die” they are tossed like so much garbage into an incinerator to be melted for the next Mickey.
Predictably, Marshall and his insufferable wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) are greedy little monsters who live and eat high on the hog, suck up to politicians, look like TV evangelists, pray on their knees, and justify their grubby existences by playing the God card. As you might also anticipate, Niflheim is no Garden of Eden. It is largely a wind-and-snow swept desert. Nor is it uninhabited. Creatures Mickey 17 calls Creepers occupy caves and allegedly have a fondness for human flesh. They look like a cross between eyebrow lice and boxing gloves. Mickey 17’s problem magnifies when he reports that he is being swarmed by the Creepers. The lab crew assumes Mickey has been eaten and print Mickey 18 (also Pattison), a more arrogant and confident version of 17. In fact, Big Mama Creeper saves Mickey 17. He and 18 wrestle around over the incinerator pits, but just when it looks as if one will vanquish the other, they must break off their battles lest they be discovered and both thrown into the soup (and no more Mickeys will be printed). It doesn’t help that 18 has the best sex with Nasha she’s ever had or that a widowed harpy name Kai (Anamarie Vartolomei) tries to bed 17, who sees her for what she is. But when Kai finds out there are two Mickeys, she tries to manipulate both.
Star Trek aficionados will recognize that the Creepers are a variant of the rock-eating “horta” and that one doesn’t mess with the little ones. When the megalomaniacal Marshalls kill a small Creeper, Mama is on the warpath and thousands of Creepers surround the spaceship as the geeky Dorothy (Patricia Ferran) frantically seeks to perfect a communications translator. There is a happy ending in that the Marshalls are deposed, the problem of multiple Mickeys is resolved, Timo is not cut into five pieces, and crew mates (especially Dorothy) cuddle baby Creepers.
Sounds awful, right? It’s strangely and inexplicably charming. Pattison is wonderful as both 17 and 18, Ruffalo chews the scenery, and Ackie is adorable and fierce. Yes, it’s a dumb script but … in a good way!
Rob Weir
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