Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho’s confused sci-fi blockbuster is a ‘serious disappointment’

Robert Pattinson plays like several clones in the South Korean film producer’s great budget follow-up to parasite and while the star himself is entertaining, the film as a whole is a mess.

No best photo winner on Oscars have been as exciting in recent years as Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite – And not just because it was the first victory that was ever not in the English language. A scary removal of the rich self -satisfaction, it was undermining in the way few price players really are, while its celebration within the gilded citizens of Hollywood added an extra layer of irony.

For fans of the South Korean film producer, the good news is that despite his extra commercial stock, his long-awaited follow-up is not less ramped: a large-scale sci-fi filled with Hollywood stars and big theme, but it mostly avoids the magnificent self-weight, There is typical of such an endeavor. The bad news – and possibly an explanation of its delays in release – is that it doesn’t really know what approach it will take instead. All in all, it should be considered a serious disappointment from the instructor.

At least Robert Pattinson fans will be happy to get more (yes, mostly two) versions of the actor for the award for one. He plays Mickey Barnes, a down-to-his-whole guy in a dystopian near future, where floods of citizens are desperate after leaving the ground that signs up for a space colonial program as an “expenses”-it means a Guinea Pig worker, It can be implemented in various dangerous experiments in favor of humanity, only to be “reprinted” every time he inevitably dies, like a new cloned version of himself. Which is all good and good until version number 17 of him unexpectedly survives after falling an ice cream shaft on planet Niflheim – and finds Mickey number 18 already installed in his residential quarters. The question is: How does two versions of the same person learn to come together – or not?

“Re -printing” or human cloning is definitely one that should have plenty of narrative potential. It can be a rich source of philosophical study, considering what it raises about itself, death and more in addition. Of course, it can also be the basis of a decent satire that molds, as it makes its “expendables” plan as the logical end point of a society that wants to exploit people without consequences. On the former front, the film seems particularly disinterested in dealing with the questions it throws up, while the comedy in the latter respect is so broad that it is completely toothless.

The colony is driven by Mark Ruffalo as a veneer-toothed, bouffant-haired, called Showman and it is a moaning obvious performance from start to finish; Like tired, Toni Collette is as his equally despotic wife flashing a cheshire-cat-size laugh of insincerity everywhere. The brilliance of the parasite was in how it separates the superficial “neatness” of its privileged characters: Here, however, they are so obvious and uninterestingly awful – characterizations worth being a bad Saturday Night Live SKIT – that the effect is to defange the story of any real bite. It can be forgettable if the film was at least funny – but over and over again lines and scenes come to a comic effect but do not deliver the goods.

Some of the actors manage Steve Buscemi and the Surly, more rebellious Mickey 18. But then it is also sidelined when the couple puts aside their animosity and joins an epic action climax involving them to meet the planet’s native cockroaches The Creepers – Seems Dune’s Gapingly-mouthed sandworms with legs. Suddenly, Bong actually goes to a conventional blockbuster -alvor, which he has so far rejected – and fails to do so too; Like its hero, this is a movie with a great identity crisis.

With one Reported budget of $ 150 millionWould it certainly be a surprise if this curio can find the kind of audience it needs to succeed. In these risky times it is good to see a expensive studio film that is at least deeply idiosyncratic-but you have to hope that such a folly does not make money that men are even more cautious in the future.