Micmacs

Micmacs, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s delightful anti-arms industry comedy, follows in style of his previous films, Amelie, A Very Long Engagement and The City of Lost Children, in creating a mythical Paris where through insane plot contrivances, love and justice conquer all. Jeunet consistently pulls it off sans irony in these very cynical times. French superstar comic Dany Boon plays the hapless Bazil. His life as a video store clerk is changed as he is hit by a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting. Soon, he finds himself on the street. Meeting a group of self-sufficient DIY clochards, a sort of Mission Impossible team is assembled to take revenge against a pair of arms manufacturers for his own shooting and the killing of his father by landmine. The movie proceeds like a Rube Goldberg invention, with ever-fantastic twists and turns filling out the inevitable triumph of the little guys.  As usual, Jeunet populates Micmacs with a brilliant cast of ultra-French eccentrics. And of course, the inimitable Jeunet regular, Dominique Pinon appears as Fracasse, the human cannonball.

Published in EL Magazine, September 2010