Mickey 17 - A Clumsy, Pandering Clown Show

okay check out this pitch right it's a sci-fi movie set in the future where we can clone people and copy their memories to bring them back to life if they die but then the main character gets cloned while he's still alive so now there's like two of them wait didn't they already do that in the sixth day nah it'll be fine and it's going to cover all the stuff that we pretend to care about here in Hollywood like the environment and colonization and the orange man and big Pharma and Powerful corporations exploiting the working classes

for profit and we'll get that guy who did parasite to write and direct it because he's good at that smart satirical stuff I don't know man our audience is pretty stupid they might not get what we're trying to say with this film don't worry it's okay we'll just make it dumb as [ __ ] and Hammer home the messaging with as much subtlety as a dump truck full of [ __ ] sledgehammers and we'll get that Ruffo guy in to play the villain like he's acting in a middle school pantomime that's sure to work are

you really sure this is a good idea sir it sounds like we're wasting a lot of good potential just to make the same political points we've been repeating for the past 10 years now and people are getting pretty sick of wouldn't it be better to just make an actual smart sci-fi movie that gets people thinking [Music] instead you're fired oh dear never have I seen such an assemblage of talent and potential squandered quite so impressively as Mickey 17 a movie whose trailer promised a black sci-fi comedy wrapped up in a b fighting satire of modern

culture made by a director with a mostly good track record and boasting a mostly talented cast who can deliver when it counts what we got instead was all of the worst excesses of modern Hollywood wrapped up in one particularly messy package a bloated and incoherent narrative that tries to juggle way too many characters and subplots takes forever to get going and doesn't do anything particularly interesting once it does characters whose decisions and thought processes only make sense if you assume that most of them are functionally [ __ ] satire that isn't smart jokes that aren't

funny heartfelt moments that Never Land because everything around them is so completely ridiculous and performances that Verge on the absurds anyway allow me to describe whatever passes for a plot so we can get this review over with in the mid 21st century with Earth increasingly polluted humanity is spreading out to colonize nearby star systems including the icy planet of neheim the Expedition is led by Kenneth Marshall a rich Christian televangelist and failed politician who spouts absolute nonsense in his speeches has almost no understanding of the ship or the mission and whose fanatical supporters wear red

caps to identify themselves right are you getting it yet anyway because it's a Dangerous Mission the ship needs a crew member who's quite literally Expendable a guy who can get killed again and again and have his Consciousness downloaded into a new body each time enter Mickey our main man who signs up for the mission to escape a lone shark after a failed business venture on Earth don't worry though if you're worried about that backstory being relevant to the main plot in any way it's not it does eat up a shitload of screen time though which

is pretty cool I guess anyway after 16 other versions of him get killed in a variety of horrible ways Mickey 17 is out on a mission to capture one of the aliens who inhabit the planet when he's captured instead and presumed killed he isn't though and when he does return to the ship he finds another version of himself has already been printed off now this presents quite the problem because two versions of the same person are strictly prohibited so they eventually agree to keep their situation hidden from everyone else that is until Mickey 17 almost

dies at a private dinner with Marshall prompting Mickey 18 to try to assassinate the guy which causes all kinds of wacky Shenanigans and almost provokes a fullscale war with the planets indigenous life forms now if I had to pin down the biggest problem with Mickey 17 I'd say that it just can't stay focused long enough to get anything done like the first 30 minutes of the film are basically just a preamble to the actual story and probably could have been condensed down into a fraction of that time there's all kinds of subplots about lone sharks

and gangsters who for some reason are willing to travel halfway across the Galaxy just to recoup a small business loan broken friendships and betrayals love triangles and relationship dynamics that go absolutely nowhere and it's all just an annoying distraction that eats up precious screen time and the finale is an absolute cluster [ __ ] of disjointed events and nonsensical decisions that kills even the vaguest idea that anything's at stake and what's kind of annoying is that there's a decent enough premise buried beneath it all the idea of a person repeatedly dying and being reborn has

been tackled many times in many different movies and there's definitely ways to keep it interesting and entertaining but Mickey 17 loses its momentum all too quickly I mean it is kind of fun watching Mickey get sacrificed in a bunch of gory ways only to get spot out of a 3D printer the next day in the same way that it's funny to watch someone walk into a plate glass door but it eventually loses its appeal after you've seen the same gag like five or six times and you realize they're not going to do anything more imaginative

with it likewise there's fertile philosophical ground to cover about the nature of Consciousness identity and even the immortal Soul especially when Mickey gets cloned while still alive but the film's got zero interest in exploring anything deeper like that it's basic surface level comedy that doesn't go much further than isn't it funny to watch two Robert Patterson's arguing with each other well no no it isn't I mean credit where credit's due patson is without a doubt the best thing in this movie and you can tell that he's doing his best to elevate some pretty mediocre material

I guess he must have watched a lot of Rick and Morty before shooting Mickey 17 though because his ah gez I don't know about this delivery is straight up impersonation of Justin roylands Tony Colette is another talented actor who's completely wasted in this film her character's got no particular reason for being in the movie and she deliv one of the most hammy over-the-top performances of her entire career then there's Mark Ruffalo [ __ ] Jesus every time I see that guy's fat rubbery face show up in a movie now my heart sinks because I know

I'm going to have to suffer through the same lazy funding performance he's been doing in basically everything recently his character Marshall is just Donald Trump crossed with one of those cheesy T evangelist conmen you see on late night TV and holy crap does Ruffalo go all in on this one you know the kind of lazy exaggerated Trump impersonation you see on Saturday Night Live which the average person on the street could probably improve on well dial that level of laziness up to 11 and you come somewhere close to ruffalo's level of on the- noose performance

in this movie it's the literal personification of Hollywood cringe It Feels So dated and hamfisted in 2025 and it's so desperate to get as many Jabs in as possible that it practically trips over itself and ruins its own premise also I can't shake the impression that when they made this movie they probably thought the US election was going to turn out very differently now just to be clear on this one I'm firmly of the belief that guys like Trump deserve to be mocked just as much as any other public figure but if you're going to

do it at least put some godamn effort into it this is the kind of [ __ ] you'd see on free entry open mic night at a not particularly good comedy club satire is supposed to be smart and subtle enough that it functions on its own merits presenting absurb Concepts and individuals in a format that's almost believable but this kind of [ __ ] isn't satire it's just straight up parody and not particularly funny parody at that ultimately Mickey 17 is a decent concept lost in the churning sludge of Hollywood politics and insecurities a film

that fails to make good on any of its promises that isn't funny enough to be a comedy smart enough to be a satire imaginative enough to be a good sci-fi movie or even exciting enough to be an action flick it's a failure in every way and if you want my advice you'll save like 2 and 1/ half hours of your life go watch something more enjoyable like paint drying anyway that's all I've got for today go away now