A giant, genetically engineered “super-pig” serves up one of the least hammy performances in “Okja,” a strange, well-intentioned but heavy-handed girl-and-her-animal story that merely demonstrates Netflix still has a lot to learn about the movie business.
Weaving together an animal-rights message as well as cautionary warnings about corporate greed, the movie becomes an awkward hybrid blending old-fashioned movies like “Babe” or “The Black Stallion” with the surrealism of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.” However admirable the intentions, the tone is seriously overcooked.
The satire is played so broadly as to overwhelm most of the international cast in this production from South Korean co-writer/director Bong Joon Ho (“Snowpiercer”). That includes marquee names Tilda Swinton as the ruthless Lucy Mirando, whose company is looking to turn all that sausage into green; and Jake Gyllenhaal as Dr. Johnny Wilcox, an equally amoral Steve Irwin-like TV personality who she turns into her corporate mascot.
The premise involves a major company that claims to have bred the aforementioned porkers — elephant-sized creatures that will help feed a starving world. Eager to promote that accomplishment, the piglets are place with different farmers across the globe, building toward a contest to see who has raised the best bacon-to-be.
Flash ahead a decade, and Okja has become the pet and companion of an orphaned Korean girl, Mija (An Seo Hyun, the movie’s clear highlight), living in an idyllic mountain setting with her grandfather. Yet when Dr. Johnny comes calling, Okja is to be whisked off to New York, ostensibly to showcase as the contest winner.
Mija resists this arrangement but wouldn’t be able to put up much resistance without help from the Animal Liberation Front, a group of vigilantes led by Jay (Paul Dano), whose painful earnestness makes it hard to determine what, exactly, we’re meant to think of them. Then again, at least there’s some nuance in Dano’s role, as opposed to the shrill cartoons with which the normally reliable Swinton and Gyllenhaal are saddled.
At its core “Okja” is intended to evoke aw-shucks responses about the girl and pig, a computer-generated creation whose level of realism comes and goes. Granted, nobody has seen a pig quite like this before, but something about the rendering — with those big plaintive eyes — isn’t quite kosher.
Nor is the movie’s resolution convincing, after a lengthy build-up that hinges on Mija and her unlikely allies seeking some way to save Okja from the slaughterhouse.
Netflix screened “Okja” at the Cannes Film Festival, which reflects the streaming service’s ambitions. Like its other recent foray into movies, “War Machine,” it’s an ungainly mix of real-world issues with satire.
Generously, one could observe that Netflix is trying to zig where others zag, creating movies that don’t resemble theatrical blockbusters. Still, if the service is renowned for cross-filing its fare under the “You might also like” heading, however tasty its title character is bred to be, it’s hard to think of many flavors that go with “Okja.”
“Okja” premieres on Netflix and in select theaters on June 28.
