Tribeca 2010: Micmacs
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is one one the more imaginative and unique directors in film today. He is most well known for his greatest work Amelie, a film in which he mixed the perfect combination of eccentricity and sentiment. What separates a classic like Amelie from Micmacs is the importance of the story. Amelie's quest to make others, and then ultimately herself, happy is what drove the movie and all the quirky moments that occurred revolved around that central theme. In Micmacs the plot is just there to allow a cast of characters to do their best physical comedy.
The very simple and far fetched plot originates with a random bullet that hits Bazil (Danny Boon) in the head. The surgeons flip a coin and decide they will leave the bullet in there and let him live his life with the bullet in his head. Bazil's life as he knows it has been practically erased and he takes shelter with a group of misfits who live within a garbage heap. Bazil then enlists them to take revenge on the arms dealers who are responsible for ruining his life and also having killed his father via a roadside bomb.
From here it turns into what seems like a long sketch comedy. Jeunet clearly loves the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers. The problem is that type of physical film comedy only works when you have the legendary talents previously mentioned. Those films revolved around their stars and they were talented enough to make the plot irrelevant. Basically, Jeunet tried to make a Gold Rush without Charlie Chaplin and that of course is impossible. There is also music from and references to the Bogart and Bacall noir classic The Big Sleep. Don't ask me why as Micmacs has absolutely no remnants of noir. A bunch of gangsters with guns does not suddenly put a quirky comedy into the noir genre as well.
I have only seen the two mentioned films from Jeunet and definitely plan on catching up with his other films. I hope they have more focus than Micmacs which seemed like the type of film Tim Burton started making when he finally became a household name as opposed to just a cult icon. The depth of his imagination went up and the depth of his characters went down. Jeunet would be keen not to follow suit.
2/5
