Bong Joon Ho’s Long Awaited, Unwieldy “Parasite” Follow-Up is Grounded By Some Stellar Acting

Like any red-blooded human being, I’m obsessed with “Parasite,” South Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s cross-cultural phenomenon. But I’m also a massive fan of his other stuff. His monster movie “The Host” is another of my all-time faves, and “Memories of Murder” and “Snowpiercer” are freaking awesome too. (I regrettably still haven’t ran the gamut of his filmography just yet.)

So I was super jacked up for “Mickey 17,” and thought it was … good. A bit of a bummer, honestly, as it’s probably the worst Joon Ho movie I’ve seen and it’s not even super close. But hey, the worst Joon Ho movie is still a good movie.

And this is definitely still a good movie. Joon Ho puts together some wild set pieces and entertaining/intense scenes, and has his usual damning political satire. The acting is the real star of the show here though, with Robert Pattinson doing awesome double duty in a dual role (this guy is just a sick actor), Naomi Ackie killing it as his badass girlfriend, and Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette obviously having a total blast as hammy and ridiculous villains.

But one of Joon Ho’s strengths has always been his uncanny ability to pivot seamlessly between genres/tones, and here it’s almost like he's going too hard trying to do that. And because of that, Your Humble Reviewer thought the pacing was a bit wonky, the runtime overlong, and the movie just sort of all over the place. It’s chaotic, sometimes in a good way, but also sometimes … not.

But for the acting alone and those occasional thrilling moments, definitely still worth a watch of course. Just don’t expect it to even sniff at the rest of Joon Ho’s body of work.