An eccentric junkyard comedy from France
Dany Boon as lovable child-man Bazil. (Sony Pictures Classics)
Micmacs
Running time: 104 minutes
MPAA rating: R (some sexuality and brief violence)
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Gadget-filled movies can be tricky to pull off. Spend too much time showing the click-clack movements and the playful tone of even a merry little film can become lost.
That's not a problem for French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Offbeat forms the center, not the edge, for most cinematic dazzlements from the writer-director of "Delicatessen" in 1991, "The City of Lost Children" in 1995 and the Oscar-nominated gem "Amélie" in 2001.
In French with subtitles, "Micmacs" beautifully blends Jeunet's love for the eccentric and the outrageous. Dany Boon, the gifted French star of "The Valet," hops in Jeunet's freakish rumble seat as gentle-but-vengeful Bazil and scores another winner.
Oddly, Boon wasn't even supposed to appear in "Micmacs." Jeunet and writing partner Guillaume Laurant penned the role with Jamel Debbouze ("Indigènes") in mind. Debbouze bowed out shortly before shooting was to begin. Boon hesitated at first (turned down the role, actually), then was lured back in.
Thank goodness he did. Boon turns in a flawless performance as a man who has been victimized twice by weapons of single destruction. When he was a child, his father was taken from him by a land mine. As an adult, Bazil takes a stray bullet to the head while minding a video store and watching Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in "The Big Sleep."
If you know Jeunet's refreshing, anything-goes style, it won't surprise you that doctors flip a coin in the operating room to decide Bazil's slim hope of survival. For those unfamiliar with the filmmaker's playful nature of life's serious moments and those dealing with them, just go along with the absurdity and you're likely to quickly become a fan.
There's a little Charlie Chaplin and more than a little Buster Keaton in Boon's turn. Bazil is a comic tragic figure. Yet even though life keeps dealing him near-death blows, Bazil takes life one child-like wide-eyed moment at a time.
Fate brings him into a circle of junkyard dealing scavengers who take him in. When Bazil happens upon the feuding weapons manufactures responsible for his unfortunate circumstances, the obscure skills of his foraging friends (Jean-Pierre Marielle as Slammer, Julie Ferrier as Elastic Girl, etc.) come into play as Jeunet rolls out the gadgets and shifts gear into a con man caper.
Leave it to the wonderfully creative Frenchman to come up with a way to involve a human cannonball in a comic sting operation.
The acting is inspired. The story oozes creativity and a macabre comic tone. Granted, the final reel may be a little too gimmicky for some at times.
That's merely a slight "Micmacs" nitpick.
That's not a problem for French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Offbeat forms the center, not the edge, for most cinematic dazzlements from the writer-director of "Delicatessen" in 1991, "The City of Lost Children" in 1995 and the Oscar-nominated gem "Amélie" in 2001.
In French with subtitles, "Micmacs" beautifully blends Jeunet's love for the eccentric and the outrageous. Dany Boon, the gifted French star of "The Valet," hops in Jeunet's freakish rumble seat as gentle-but-vengeful Bazil and scores another winner.
Oddly, Boon wasn't even supposed to appear in "Micmacs." Jeunet and writing partner Guillaume Laurant penned the role with Jamel Debbouze ("Indigènes") in mind. Debbouze bowed out shortly before shooting was to begin. Boon hesitated at first (turned down the role, actually), then was lured back in.
Thank goodness he did. Boon turns in a flawless performance as a man who has been victimized twice by weapons of single destruction. When he was a child, his father was taken from him by a land mine. As an adult, Bazil takes a stray bullet to the head while minding a video store and watching Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in "The Big Sleep."
If you know Jeunet's refreshing, anything-goes style, it won't surprise you that doctors flip a coin in the operating room to decide Bazil's slim hope of survival. For those unfamiliar with the filmmaker's playful nature of life's serious moments and those dealing with them, just go along with the absurdity and you're likely to quickly become a fan.
There's a little Charlie Chaplin and more than a little Buster Keaton in Boon's turn. Bazil is a comic tragic figure. Yet even though life keeps dealing him near-death blows, Bazil takes life one child-like wide-eyed moment at a time.
Fate brings him into a circle of junkyard dealing scavengers who take him in. When Bazil happens upon the feuding weapons manufactures responsible for his unfortunate circumstances, the obscure skills of his foraging friends (Jean-Pierre Marielle as Slammer, Julie Ferrier as Elastic Girl, etc.) come into play as Jeunet rolls out the gadgets and shifts gear into a con man caper.
Leave it to the wonderfully creative Frenchman to come up with a way to involve a human cannonball in a comic sting operation.
The acting is inspired. The story oozes creativity and a macabre comic tone. Granted, the final reel may be a little too gimmicky for some at times.
That's merely a slight "Micmacs" nitpick.
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