Wayward maverick genius Jean-Pierre Jeunet took a break from directing after making A Very Long Engagement in 2004 to rediscover his mojo, so is Micmacs worth the wait? Well, it’s funny, incredibly inventive, peopled with quirky characters and visually stunning, but Amelie it ain’t. It’s more of the standard of the flashily brilliant but patchy City Of Lost Children than Engagement or Amelie, but it’s still worth watching for the many superbly staged set pieces. Unfortunately though, it just doesn’t quite hang together.
Dany Boon is a great choice for the leading man, playing Bazil, who has a hard life well before adulthood. His dad is blown up by a mine and he is educated at the harshest school in Paris. He has apparently found happiness in a job in a video store, where he learns the script of The Big Sleep off by heart, but during a drive-by shooting a bullet gets lodged in his brain.
He loses his job and, homeless, is adopted by a gang who live in a cave in the local scrapyard. They recycle rubbish – yep, it’s The Wombles! It’s the usual lot that Jeunet assembles for pretty much every film, with a cute human calculator with huge glasses, a mechanical genius, a story-writer who mixes his metaphors, a contortionist, an earth mother figure and Dominique Pinon as the human cannonball. Their cave is a beautifully realised set, but for Jeunet fans you’ve seen it all before.
While out finding junk to recycle, Bazil comes across two giant buildings opposite each other in the street – one bears the logo of the mine which killed his dad, the other the shield of the bullet stuck in his brain. He hatches a plan to destroy each company by setting them against each other, and uncovers a secret world of arms trading in the process.
Jeunet’s love of set pieces is both the film’s strength and its weakness – some of them are brilliant but he overdoes it. There are simply too many break-ins at the homes of the two rival MDs, too many microphones going down chimneys and too many gags with the contortionist hiding in the fridge. One involving a porn couple distracting a guard is well staged, but another involving a human cannonball and a truck escape goes on for too long. Jeunet has always been accused of being more interested in visual textures than people, which wasn’t true in the likes of Amelie, but here it’s probably a fair criticism. Bazil’s budding romance with the contortionist is twee, and the earth mother character is actually annoying. Jeunet’s first foray into politics is surprising and does not quite ring true, despite several nasty characters getting their comeuppance. In fact, one scene in which three hitmen are murdered leaves a sour taste.
Visually though it’s a gorgeous treat, with Paris looking lovely and the design of the two competing arms buildings the real stars.
Overall Verdict: A mixed bag, with Jeunet on top design and visual form and as quirky as ever, but the plot gets too bogged down in politics.
Reviewer: Mike Martin
