Movie Reviews

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Mickey 17

♥️♥️ 1/2

Mickey 17 • Various streaming services • R • 2 h 17 min. • 2 min. read

Unfortunately, this movie has the look and feel of a Paul Verhoeven (Starship Troopers, Total Recall, Robocop) version of Dune on an ice planet. Bong Joon Ho, the critically acclaimed Korean director of Parasite, wrote the screenplay and directed, based on the book Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton. Mickey 17 fails because of the screenplay. Well, there's the Creepers too.

Mickey and his friend Timo flee Earth from a loan shark by joining a colonizing spaceship bound for the ice-planet, Niflheim. Mickey had signed up as an "expendable", forced to perform dangerous jobs After each time he dies, a new identical body is printed and his stored memories are downloaded. Mickey becomes romantically involved with Nasha, a security agent. While on a mission, Mickey falls into a crevasse and is left to die by Timo. The crevasse is inhabited by the native Creepers, bug-like creatures who instead of eating Mickey, save him. Some of the creatures are small like puppy dogs, while the mamma queen is giant, about the size of a three car train.

Mistakenly believing Mickey 17 is dead, the technicians print Mickey 18, an inexplicably belligerent version. Kenneth Marshall, the narcissistic, ruthless leader of the colonization team, discovers the Creepers when two baby Creepers are unexpectedly released from their nesting rock at a ceremony aboard the ship. Marshall decides to eliminate the Creepers and forces the two Mickeys strapped with bombs to exit the ship and do the job. What follows are battles inside and outside the ship to save the Creepers and depose Marshall and his wife, Ylyfa.

Robert Pattinson is very good as the Mickey's, his best role to date. Mark Ruffalo is excellent as the maniacal Kenneth Marshall. Toni Collette gives another outstanding performance, playing Ylyfa, a violent, obsequious, gastronome. Steven Yeun ( Walking Dead) is good as Timo, Mickey's two-timing, drug dealing friend. The weakest cast members are the Creepers who are laughable and rank as some of the worst-looking creatures in moviedom. They are more cuddly than scary.

The screenplay is week. After multiple iterations, Mickey doesn't change, remains apathetic and continues to be manipulated to his deaths instead of learning and rebelling.(Mickey 18 is an unexplainable aberration.) Rather than having two Mickey's, a better storyline would be the gradual personality change of one Mickey. It's also inconsistent that someone who is so apathetic is smitten by Nasha and obsessed by their sex. The creatures are comic and not scary. A workaround, like Spielberg did with the shark in Jaws, was not possible.

I can't recommend this movie. A much better movie is Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise, who enters a time loop every time he dies that resets him to the previous day. The creatures in that film are much more realistic and scary.