Movie Review: Mikey 17

Once a famous director wins an Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director, they have the power to write their own ticket to receive funding to produce any movie they want for years into the future. Too often, having the clout to fund and produce a new movie results in a horrible film. A great recent example of this is Francis Ford Coppola's movie from last year "Megalopolis", when Coppola spent 124 million dollars of his own money to produce one of the worst movies ever made.

While the new movie "Mikey 17" is not as bad as Megalopolis, it is bad enough to make any top ten list for one of the worst movies ever released. Starting with the insane logline: "In a futuristic world on another planet, an expendable worker on a colonization mission, dies many times and then is recreated using a 3D printing machine that can create clones of any human being". What is the point of the main character Mickey Barnes, played by Robert Pattinson, dying 17 times in a row, and then being recreated is never really explained in this story. There is another character in this film who appears several times dressed as a giant rooster - also never explained, even for those in the audience who have not fallen into a coma.

The entire film is about following Mickey Barnes as he falls victim and dies in one accident after another, and then winds up back again in the human cloning machine. The screenplay is nonsensical, disjoined, and largely makes no sense. Inside of 30 minutes, anyone watching this mess is looking at their watch, hoping for a quick end to this torture, which unfortunately is way too long at 2 hours and 17 minutes.

Other actors in this bad movie include Steven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo, and Toni Collette and I can only conclude that these well-known actors agreed to act in this movie for an opportunity to work with an Academy Award-winning director - Bong Joon Ho - and then forgot to read the screenplay he wrote.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film are an insanely high 79%, which is about the new trend in Hollywood where something never seen before, is more important than quality. My rating, only for some of the special effects is 20%, and a recommendation to run from this disaster of 2 hours.