Micmacs (12A)

Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France, 2010, 105 mins

Cast: Dany Boon, Andre Dussollier, Omar Sy, Dominique Pinon, Julie Ferrier, Nicolas Marie

Review by Philippa Bradnock

Micmacs is a madcap comedy with a kind of intricate slapstick which lies somewhere between Chaplin and MacGyver . Bazil (Boon) is a lowly video store clerk who accidentally gets shot in the head. He emerges from hospital with no job, no home and the bullet still lodged in his brain, in prime position to kill him without warning. He makes friends with a group of misfits who live at the rubbish tip and sort and fix discarded objects. With their help he embarks on a mission to wreak revenge on the heads of the arms companies which made the landmine that killed his father years before and the bullet which now threatens to kill him.

Jeunet's latest film returns to the whimsical, sometimes overly cutesy atmosphere of Amelie and tones down the freakish grisliness which characterised Delicatessen and Alien Resurrection . Micmacs swings between scenarios straight out of a grown up thriller (lethal landmines, corrupt arms dealers, Russian roulette in a swanky apartment, drive by shootings) and a kind of hyper-saccharine comic caper sensibility in which the main characters talk in a cutesy made up language, do backbends instead of simply squatting down, and each have one amazing and useful talent. The friends remain almost psychotically cheerful throughout, the perfect underdog team to triumph over the business pitbulls: the choleric Marconi (Marie) and the old school de Fenouillet (Dussollier).

This blend of the fantastical and the prosaic is typical of Jeunet's films. Micmacs also has the same warm colour palette and fascination with its characters' rubbery faces as his earlier work. It is cluttered with objects, distractions, diversions: the group of friends cobble together machines out of grimy rubbish to facilitate Bazil's convoluted plan, and de Fenouillet collects the body parts of great people (Marilyn's molar, Churchill's nail clippings). The scenes where the team enact their plot show these deliciously precarious props, and equipment fails and disintegrates alarmingly.

The film is also very aware of its own nature, and reference and self reference abound. Even before the title sequence Bazil lip synchs along to The Big Sleep . The danger with namechecking other films is that is thatthe one you're watching will suddenly start to look pretty anaemic in comparison and it's hard to see how anyone can stand up to Bogie and Bacall. It's testament to the overwhelming goodness of Jeunet's vision, therefore, that the cinematic references throughout come off as merely enthusiastic fandom, a boundless joy in the medium, rather than a competitive bid. The final sequence is a masterpiece of DIY foley, and the villains' comeuppance is surprisingly and satisfyingly 21 st century.

The let down here is the achingly slow pacing. Each segment of Bazil's plot plays out sluggishly and as we are not let in on the plan it is often hard to see where things are going. Sometimes this can be fun, but in Micmacs it is often just confusing. Micmacs is imaginative and playful, and has enough of Jeunet's visionary flair to keep fans entertained, even if it ambles rather than trots.