Academy Award winning director/writer Bong Joon Ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer, Okja) is back with his new film released this weekend after several delays, Mickey 17, based on a novel named Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton. Mickey 17 is a mix of sci-fi/dark comedy/drama/satire/fantasy-adventure. Unfortunately, these genres are not combined well and are at odds with the others more times than not.

Mickey 17 tells the story of a man named Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), who, in order to escape earth and a loan shark who is after him, volunteers to be an expendable, a person they give the bad jobs to and, if something tragic happens, they clone the expendable and replace his memories.

Which is where the 17 comes from in the title. The seventeenth version of Mickey is the one we are with during the brunt of the beginning of the film. Then something unexpected happened and they wind up creating Mickey 18, even though Mickey 17 was not yet dead.

While I feel that there were several problems with the movie, I did not hate this. In fact, I am kind of on the fence about it. Some of the stronger parts of the film is certainly the performance of Robert Pattinson. His work as both Mickeys was extremely strong, as he was able to create two distinct characters, even though they were meant to be the same person. I am not sure why Mickey 18 turned out to be as different from Mickey 17 as he did, which was something the film did not go into.

The first part of the film was very intriguing. I liked the sci-fi elements to the story, especially the ones between 17 and 18 in the early part of the film.

The film looked great. The CGI was spectacular and you could see the wonderful eye of director Bong Joon Ho.

However, the film was not that funny, with most of the humor falling flat. I did not enjoy the performance of Mark Ruffalo, who was clearly doing a satirical take on Donald Trump. I am not a Trump fan, and I believe there is plenty of area available for parody, but this was just so over-the-top and blatant that it lacked any subtlety at all. Plus the character played by Ruffalo is such a one-note villain that it felt too cartoonish for the rest of the film. Toni Collette, who played the wife of Ruffalo’s character, was better, but she was similarly one dimensional. Her whole obsession with “sauce” made little sense in the overall film.

Several characters and moments were introduced only to never really have a payoff. I love Steven Yeun (Walking Dead), but his character was inconsistent for me and his storyline felt like it was added to get Steven Yeun into the movie. It felt like it could have been removed completely without any massive change to the story.

It was also 2 hours and 17 minutes long, which is not a bad thing necessarily, but it did feel its length during the film. The last part of the movie was chaotic and strange and I am not sure how well it worked. I do like the big swings with the oddity of a film that this is, but it just did not feel to be a cohesive narrative with a consistent tone.

I think some of the ideas in Mickey 17 are extremely great and could have made a better movie than what this turned out to be. For me, I came out of the theater with a meh feel after having some high hopes heading in. As I said, it is not a bad movie. It does not come anywhere near Parasite or Snowpiercer.

2.9 stars