This ISN’T a sequel to Mickey One?
I knew my dad wasn’t digging this (I snuck glances to see if he’d fallen asleep; he hadn’t), but he always assumes I like everything and tries to put out a positive vibe before squealing to my mom about the latest crapfest his loser son dragged him to. So, there I am, seething in my barely concealed rage while he put on a brave face, extolling upon the few virtues of this horrendous satirical sci-fi failure. Suddenly, he wondered aloud: That ending was kinda weird. If the planet has seasons, why didn’t they just fly to the other side where it’s Spring already? I jerked my head around. As if this fucking thing couldn’t be any dumber, he somehow ran a perfectly timed logic comb through the rat's nest that is this shitstorm and unraveled the whole damn thing. Bravo!
A soul-crushing disaster. ‘Member the running “joke” where everybody asks R. Patz’ kazoo-voiced clown baby what it’s like to die? For me, it was watching Mickey 17. It is, as Collette’s embarrassing, sauce-obsessed grotesque put it: “A croissant covered in shit.” Where to begin? Bong Joon-Ho's heavy-handed, tone-deaf direction? His utterly bewildering lack of comic invention or even steady pacing? The ugly, dingy photography and set design that not even a 32k camera could improve upon? How ‘bout the hammy, labored, unctuous performances from a cast of professionals adrift in a snowy wasteland of comedic desolation? Even when the split screen was totally believable, I kept detecting Pattinson babbling to a tennis ball. If only he had an actor on set who’d done this sort of thing before. Oh yeah, he did, but my sister’s forever-crush was too busy humiliating himself as an obvious, preening, pathetic symbol of corruption, greed, cartoonishly large teeth, and simpering fascist megalomania. Ackie and Vartolomei don’t even get the courtesy of being wasted. These characters are NOTHING. There’s nothing here. It’s empty. It’s vacant. It's a dry printer cartridge that STILL splotches your fingers when you try to throw it away.
Did I like anything? I liked the IDEAS it presented, like a mass exodus from this slowly decaying cosmic orb we’re currently renting, the lava-fueled disposal system being used to fuel the 3-D printer, the indigenous Tremors/Corgi creatures, and oh, that multiple serial killer because that sounded like a WAY better movie! Bong, do a remake of Memories of Murder, but with THAT guy! Meanwhile, the moral quandaries, socio-economic implications, fear-mongering religiosity tactics, and all the politically and environmentally woke commentary? Yup, I read ya loud and clear and now, allow me to retort. Do NOT waste our time with prescient messaging when your delivery system is so paltry, so dead-eyed, and so utterly bereft of the imagination which draws us to the movies in the first place. I haven't been this bored in years and I doubt I’ll have to wait until 2054 to forget this movie. Goddamnit, they’d better not have ruined macarons for me too.
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