REVIEW:
Here’s a sci-fi movie that looks like Moon (the Sam Rockwell clones in space flick,) with a twist. The twist is that this guy knows he’s a clone the whole time. In fact he signs up for it. And the government uses him, almost as if he’s a robot or a crash test dummy, to test the most harmful things and just die again and again. It sounds okay. It sounds like there’s enough there for a great short story, or a Saturday Night Live skit, but for an entire movie, not even close.
But there’s another factor. This movie was made by director Bong Joon Ho. And it’s his follow up to his Oscar winning sensation Parasite. That certainly is enough to get people’s attention. Until you realize that most of his movies are not very good. The Host, Okja, and even Snowpiercer (although it became a cult classic,) all left a lot to be desired. And even Parasite wasn’t great (although it was certainly his best.) So being excited for something by this director is probably more about hype than it is about realized actuality.
And then there’s the movie itself, where the first half is about the clones and the second half is about giant bugs, almost like Starship Troopers or something. The first half is definitely better. In fact, the first bunch of scenes are really good. That’s when the premise is explained. We get Robert Pattinson’s voice overs done in a fun and interesting voice (kind of a Steve Buscemi voice,) and there’s a lot of humor here. It’s honor about how he is treated so poorly by the scientists, who basically use him like an object instead of a person. There’s one moment where his hand is lopped off and the scientists all laugh about it, and it’s almost like they’re watching g someone play a video game.
But that single joke, about how bad things are for Mickey as he dies again and again, can only be taken so far. Pretty soon we start getting into the story, and it loses our attention and interest more and more. There’s a good cast here, including Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette, but they are all just bring given permission to act crazy weird, and it’s way too much. The two clones idea is slightly interesting. Especially when it kind of leads to a threesome. And just like in Challengers, that scene is cut way too short. Why not show Mickey getting with himself, with the girl slowly fading out of the middle?
Even still the first half, despite its flaws, is far superior to the second half. The second half is just completely about these bugs. Are they really good, and people are just afraid of them and want to exterminate them for no reason? Or is their plan yo trick us into thinking they’re good, snd wait until our defenses are down? Or are they actually just harmless, talking a big threatening game, that doesn’t really amount to much? The more this movie goes back and forth on the bugs, the more we lose interest. This was a movie with a nice premise, that in no way had enough material to stretch for an entire film.