Mickey 17

 Mickey (Edward Pattinson) is an expendable. He signed his life away to escape an ugly situation on Earth to go off-planet on a colony ship run by a failed politician with delusions of grandeur (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife (Toni Collette).

 His function on the ship is, quite literally, to die for science. His conscience is transferred, somehow, between deaths, stored on a 'brick' (the prop for which is, in a good example of the film's loopy humour, an actual brick), and his new bodies are created by a machine that spits them out with the same juddering, back and forth spasms as an inkjet printer. The crew use him to examine the deadly effects of space radiation, foreign pathogens, experimental drugs; A recyclable human test subject.

 His occupation makes him all but a pariah on the ship, an untouchable for all except for Nasha (Naomi Ackie), a security officer who takes an inexplicable and fierce romantic interest in Mickey and stays with him throughout all his incarnations.

 The main plot of the film kicks in after the colony ship arrives at their destination, an icy planet appropriately named Niflheim. Mickey's current incarnation, 17, is left for dead on an icy crevice, and is rescued by the planet's native life forms (a counterintuitively cute mix that look like wood lice and move like excited French bulldogs). But in the time it takes him to get back to the ship, they've already printed out 18 - leaving them as multiples, a situation that marks them both for disposal. And from there the film shoots out in multiple directions at once.

 At its heart Mickey 17 (the film, not the character) is a farce, a pretty unsubtle satire that runs its titular protagonist through a bunch of ridiculous situations, bouncing off cartoony characters. It's nominally sci-fi, but despite a killer production design and some lip service to depicting how future technologies might impact society at large, its got no real interest in that genre; It's a comedy through and through, and it will happily contradict its internal rules for the sake of an easy joke or an exciting scene. Hollywood sci-fi, in other words.

 The satire becomes a bit more pointed in its second half, with the introduction of a racist agenda, odes to failing upwards and self-serving jingoism. It's impossible to avoid assigning targets to the film's barbs, but they are pretty toothless and vague, seemingly by design. Ruffalo and Collette's power couple, for example, take pains to at least appear to be respectful to others, which is at severe odds with their real-world analogue's performative anti-wokeness. Isn't that depressing? Satirical, fictional dystopian politicians are better than what we've got.

 Likewise, the whole second half of the movie devolves into a bloated morass of plotlines and contrivances. Writer/Director Bong Joon-ho throws together a bunch of his usual preoccupations (class warfare, lack of empathy, exploitation) but he's hobbled by an uncharacteristic optimism which robs the movie of a lot of its intended bite. His script has a lot of solid ideas and jokes, but the plotting is unsatisfying, and his seeming contempt for his characters makes some late-game triumphs feel hollow.

 There's enough good stuff to make it entirely worthwhile, though. Joon ho's directing is, as usual, incredible (there's a dinner scene here that should handily make him a contender come awards season), the cinematography by Darius Khondji is characteristically beautiful, and the special effects are excellent.
 Every single character in the movie except Mickey 17 (but including 18) becomes a cartoonish asshole at least some of the time. That doesn't do wonders for their likeability or coherence, but it does get a few laughs. Ruffalo's comedic take on a showboat politician is as broad as a barn - a less restrained cousin to his rake in Poor Things - but it is very funny, as is Steve Yeun as a self-serving "friend" or the callous gaggle of scientists that very excitedly observe and take notes on Mickey's agony.
 Pattinson's turn is also buffoonish: he is an idiot as the protagonist, and a volatile psycho in his next incarnation. But his meekness is endearing, and the fact that (partly due to circumstance) he never turns into a raging asshole like everyone else does makes him a successful anchor to the film.

 If I had to be honest, I'd recommend every other Bong Joon-ho film over this one; It just feels too undisciplined, too self-indulgent, and ultimately, forgettable . But it still made me laugh quite a bit, and it frequently looks incredible.